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IN THE CLAWS OF 
THE GERMAN EAGLE 




Gremberg, the Belgian, on the Iron Trench Looking to America 



IN THE CLAWS OF 

THE GERMAN 

EAGLE 



BY 

ALBERT RHYS WILLIAMS 

SPECIAL WAR CORRESPONDENT OF THE OUTLOOK 
IN BELGIUM 




NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & CO. 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 






Copyright, 1917, 
Bt e. p. dutton & CO. 



: r 



APR 23 1917 

printed tn the Hutted States of Hmerica 



©GI.A460448 



TO 

THOSE WHO SEE 

BEYOND THE RED MISTS 

OF WAR 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

My thanks go to the Editors of The Outlook 
for permission to reproduce the articles which 
first appeared in that magazine. 

Also to many friends all the way from Mav- 
erick to Pasadena. Above all to Frank Pur- 
chase, my comrade in the first weeks of the 
war and always. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Instead of a Preface 1 

PART I 

THE SPY-HUNTERS OF BELGIUM 

CHAPTEB 

I. A Little German Surprise Party . 11 

II. Sweating under the German Third 

Degree 30 

III. A Night on a Prison Floor ... 50 

IV. Roulette and Liberty 68 

PART II 

ON FOOT WITH THE GERMAN ARMY 

V. The Gray Hordes out of the North . 95 

VI. In the Black Wake of the War . . 107 

VII. A Duelist from Marburg .... 121 

VIII. Thirty-seven Miles in a Day . . . 135 

PART III 

WITH THE WAR PHOTOGRAPHERS IN BELGIUM 

IX. How I Was Shot as a German Spy . 153 

X. The Little Belgian Who Said, "You 

Betcha" 175 

XI. Atrocities and the Socialist . . . 192 



viii CONTENTS 

PART IV 

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XII. The Beating or "The General" . . 225 

XIII. America in the Arms of France . . 248 

XIV. No-Man's-Land 263 

Afterword 270 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Gremberg the Belgian looks to America . Frontispiece 

?AGE 

24 



German Prisoners happy at being interned and — 
Belgian Spies and Snipers fearful of being shot 

The mysterious Cipher Code which excited Javert 37 



Uhlans occupying the Belgian Countryside and- 
The Peasants who fled before them . 



101 



Facsimile of a Permit to enter "Belgium-Ger- 
many" 103 

Hungry Germans foraging in Vise 
Thirsty ones snatching a Drink on the Drive to } 114 
Paris J 

The Belgians shoot a "German Spy". . . . 161 

The little Belgian who said "You betcha I'm 
a'Merican" 182 



188 



Plucky Madame Callebaut saved her Home from — 
This Destruction which was visited on her City . 

Starting the March amidst Friends and Flowers J 

and— [ 223 

Ending it as Captives in the Hands of the Enemy J 

In the Cathedral of Rheims . . . . . . 225 



[Illustrations on Pages 24, 101, 114, 223, 225 are from Photographs 

by Underwood and Underwood.] 

ix 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE 

THE horrible and incomprehensible hates 
and brutalities of the European War! 
Unspeakable atrocities! Men blood-lusting 
like a lot of tigers! 

Horrible they are indeed. But my experi- 
ences in the war zone render them no longer 
incomprehensible. For, while over there, in my 
own blood I felt the same raging beasts. Over 
there, in my own soul I knew the shattering of 
my most cherished principles. 

It is not an unique experience. Whoever has 
been drawn into the center of the conflict has 
found himself swept by passions of whose pres- 
ence and power he had never dreamed. 

For example: I was a pacifist bred in the 
bone. Yet, caught in Paris at the outbreak of 
the war, my convictions underwent a rapid 
crumbling before the rising tide of French na- 
tional feeling. The American Legion exercised 

1 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

a growing fascination over me. A little longer, 
and I might have been marching out to the 
music of the Marseillaise, dedicated to the kill- 
ing of the Germans. Two weeks later I fell 
under the spell of the self-same Germans. That 
long gray column swinging on through Liege 
so mesmerized me that my natural revulsion 
against slaughter was changed to actual admi- 
ration. 

Had an officer right then thrust a musket into 
my hand, I could have mechanically fallen into 
step and fared forth to the killing of the French. 
Such an experience makes one chary about dis- 
pensing counsels of perfection to those fighting 
in the vortex of the world-storm. Whenever I 
begin to get shocked at the black crimes of the 
belligerents, my own collapse lies there to ac- 
cuse me. 

It is in the spirit of a non-partisan, then, that 
this chronicle of adventure in those crucial days 
of the early war is written. It is a welter of 
experiences and reactions which the future may 
use as another first-hand document in casting 
up its own conclusions. There is no careful 

2 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE 

culling out of just those episodes which sup- 
port a particular theory, such as the total and 
complete depravity of the German race. 

Despite my British ancestry, the record tries 
to be impartial — without pro- or anti-German 
squint. If the reader had been in my skin, zig- 
zagging his way through five different armies, 
the things which I saw are precisely the ones 
which he would have seen. So I am not to blame 
whether these episodes damn the Germans or 
bless them. Some do, and some don't. What 
one ran into was largely a matter of luck. 

For example : In Brussels on September 27, 
1914, I fell in with a lieutenant of the British 
army. With an American passport he had made 
his way into the city through the German lines. 
We both desired to see Louvain, but all passage 
thereto was for the moment forbidden. Start- 
ing out on the main road, however, sentry after 
sentry passed us along until we were halted 
near staff headquarters, a few miles out of the 
city, and taken before the commandant. We 
informed him of our overweening desire to view 
the ruins of Louvain. He explained, as sar- 

3 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

castically as he could, that war was not a social 
diversion, and bade us make a quick return to 
Brussels, swerving neither to the right nor left 
as we went. 

As we were plodding wearily back, tempta- 
tion suddenly loomed up on our right in the 
shape of a great gas-bag which we at first took 
to be a Zeppelin. It proved to be a stationary 
balloon which was acting as the eye of the artil- 
lery. It was signaling the range to the Ger- 
man gunners beneath, who were pounding away 
at the Belgians. In our excitement over the 
spectacle, we went plunging across fields until 
we gained a good view of the great swaying 
thing, tugging away at the slender filament of 
rope which bound it to the earth. 

Sinking down into the grass, we were so in- 
tent upon the sharp electric signaling as to be 
oblivious to aught else, until a voice rang a 
harsh challenge from behind. Jumping to our 
feet, we faced a squad of German soldiers and 
an officer who said : 

1 i What are you doing here ! ' ' 
4 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE 

"Came out to see the big balloon," we some- 
what naively informed him. 

"Very good!" he said. And then, quite as 
if he were rewarding our manifest zeal for ex- 
ploration, he added, "Come along with me and 
you can see the big commandant, too." 

Three soldiers ahead and three behind, we 
were escorted down the railroad track in silence 
until we began to pass some cars filled with the 
recently wounded in a fearfully shot-to-pieces 
state. Some one mumbled "Englishmen!" and 
the whole crowd, bandaged and bleeding as they 
were, rose to the occasion and greeted us with 
derisive shouts. 

' i Put the blackguards to work, ' ' growled one. 

"No ! Kill the damn spies ! " shouted another, 
as he pulled himself out of the straw, "kill 
them ! ' ' 

A huge fellow almost wild from his wounds 
bellowed out: "Why don't you stick your bay- 
onet into the cursed Englishmen?" No doubt 
it would have eased his pain a bit to see us get- 
ting a taste of the same thing he was suffering. 

Our officer, as if to make concessions to this 
5 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

hue and cry, growled harshly: " Don't look 
around! Damn you! and take your hands out 
of your pockets !" 

We heaved sighs of relief as we left this place 
of pain and hate behind. But a new terror took 
hold of us as a turn in the track brought our 
destination into view. It was the staff head- 
quarters in which, two hours before, the com- 
mandant had ordered us to make direct return 
to Brussels. 

"Wait here," said the officer as he walked in- 
side. 

We stood there trying to appear unconcerned 
while we cursed the exploring bent in our con- 
stitutions, and mentally composed farewell let- 
ters to the folks at home. 

But luck does sometimes light upon the ban- 
ners of the daring. It seems that in the two 
hours since we had left headquarters a complete 
change had been made in the staff. At any 
rate, an officer whom we had not seen before 
came out and addressed us in English. We told 
him that we were Americans. 

6 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE 

"Well, let's see what you know about New 
York, ' ' lie said. 

We displayed an intensive knowledge of 
Coney Island and the Great White Way, which 
he deemed satisfactory. 

"Nothing like them in Europe!" he assured 
us. "I did enjoy those ten years in America. I 
would do anything I could for one of you fel- 
lows." 

He backed this up by straightway ordering 
our release, and authenticated his claim to 
American residence by his last shot : 

"Now, boys, beat it back to Brussels." 

We stood not on the order of our beating, but 
beat at once. 

One may pick out of such an experience pre- 
cisely what one wishes to pick out : the imbecile 
hatred in the Teuton — the perfidy of the Brit- 
ish — the efficiency or the blundering of the Ger- 
man — or perchance the foolhardiness of the 
American, just as his nationalistic bias leads 
him. 

So, from the narratives in this book, one may 
select just the material which supports his the- 

7 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

ory as to the merits or demerits of any nation. 
To myself, out of these insights into the Great 
Calamity, there has come reenforcement to my 
belief in the essential greatness of the human 
stuff in all nations. Along with this goes a 
faith that in the New Internationalism mankind 
will lay low the military Frankenstein that he 
has created, and realize the triumphant brother- 
hood of all human souls. 



Pakt I 
THE SPY-HUNTERS OF BELGIUM 



CHAPTER I 

A LITTLE GERMAN" SURPRISE PARTY 

"fTWO days and the French will be here! 

-■■ Three days at the outside, and not an 
ugly Boche left. Just mark my word ! ' ' 

This the patriarchal gentleman in the Hotel 
Metropole whispered to me about a month after 
the Germans had captured Brussels. They had 
taken away his responsibilities as President of 
the Belgian Red Cross, so that now he had 
naught to do but to sit upon the lobby divan, of 
which he covered much, being of extensive girth. 
But no more extensive than his heart, from 
which radiated a genial glow of benevolence to 
all — all except the invaders, the sight or men- 
tion of whom put harshness in his face and 
anger in his voice. 

"Scabbard-rattler!" he mumbled derisively, 
as an officer approached. "Clicks his spurs to 

11 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

get attention ! Wants you to look at him. Don't 
you do it. I never do." He closed his eyes 
tightly, as if in sleep. 

Oftentimes he did not need to feign his slum- 
ber. But sinking slowly down into unconscious- 
ness his native gentleness would return and a 
smile would rest upon his lips ; I doubt not that 
in his dreams the Green-Gray troops of Despot- 
ism were ridden down by the Blue and Eed Re- 
publicans of France. 

Once even he hummed a snatch of the Mar- 
seillaise. An extra loud blast from the distant 
cannonading stirred him from his reverie. 

"Ah ha!" he exclaimed, clasping my arm, 
1 1 the artillery — it 's getting nearer all the time. 
They are driving back the Boches, eh! We'll 
be free to-morrow, certain. Then we'll cele- 
brate together in my country-home." 

Walking over to the door, he peered down the 
street as if he already expected to catch a glint 
of the vanguard of the Blue and Red. Twice Ije 
did this and returned with confidence unshaken. 

' ' Mark my word, ' ' he reiterated ; ' ' three days 
at the outside and we shall see the French!" 

12 



A LITTLE GERMAN SURPRISE PARTY 

That was in September, 1914. Those three 
days passed away into as many weeks, into as 
many months, and into almost as many years. I 
cannot help wondering whether the same hopes 
stirred within him at each fresh outburst of can- 
nonading on the Somme. And whether through 
those soul- sickening months that white-haired 
man peered daily down those Brussels streets, 
yearning for the advent of the Red and Blue 
Army of Deliverance. Red and Blue it was ever 
in his mind. If once it had come in its new uni- 
form of somber hue, it would have been a dis- 
appointing shock I fear. He was an old man 
then ; he is now perhaps beyond all such human 
hurts. His pain was as real as anything I saw 
in all the war. I had little time to dwell upon 
it, however, for presently I was put into a sit- 
uation that called for all my wits. I was intro- 
duced to it by the announcement of the porter : 

"An American gentleman to see you, sir." 

That was joyful news to one held within the 
confines of a captive city, from which all exit 
was, for the time being, closely barred. 

It was September 28th, my birthday, too. The 
13 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

necessity of celebrating this in utter boredom 
was a dismal prospect. Now this came upon me 
like a little surprise-party. 

Picking up a bit of paper on which I had been 
scribbling down a few memoranda that I feared 
might escape my mind, I hastened into the hall- 
way to meet a somewhat spare, tall, and ex- 
tremely erect-appearing man. He greeted me 
with a smile and a bow — a rather dry smile and 
a rather stiff bow for an American. 

So I queried, "You're an American, are 
you?" 

"Not exactly," he responded; "but I would 
like to talk with you." 

Without the shadow of a suspicion, I told him 
it would be a great relief from the tedium of 
the day to talk to any one. 

"But I would prefer to talk to you in your 
room," he added. 

"Certainly," I responded, stepping toward 
the elevator. 

The hotel was practically deserted, so I was 
somewhat surprised when two men, one a huge 
fellow built on a superdreadnaught plan, fol- 

14 



A LITTLE GERMAN SURPRISE PARTY 

lowed us in and got out with us on the fifth floor. 
The superdreadnaught sailed on into my room, 
which seemed a breach of propriety for an un- 
introduced stranger. He closed the door rudely 
behind him. I was prepared to resent this al- 
together high-handed intrusion, when my tall 
guest said, very simply, "I am representing the 
Imperial German Government." 

I rallied under the shock sufficiently to say, 
"Will you take a chair!" 

"No," came the laconic reply, "I will take 
you — and this, ' ' he said, reaching for the piece 
of scribble-paper I had in my hands, "and any 
baggage you have in your room." 

I assured him that I had none, as I really 
expected to stay in Brussels but a day. He 
pretended not to hear my reply, and said, 

"We better take it with us, for we will prob- 
ably need it." 

He looked under the bed and unlocked the 
closet door. Finding nothing, he asked for the 
key to my room. I handed it over, Room Num- 
ber 502. 

"You will be so good as to follow me now." 
15 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

Now every one knows that the Spy-Season in 
Europe opened with the beginning of the war. 
Spy hunting became at once a veritable mania. 

Consequently no self-respecting person re- 
turns from the war-zone without at least one 
hair-raising story of being taken as a spy. 
Being just an average species of American, I 
exhale no particular air of mystery or villainy ; 
yet I suffered a score of times the laying on of 
hands by German, French, Belgian, and even 
Dutch authorities. 

But this experience is marked off from all 
my other ordeals in four ways. In the first 
place, instead of casually falling into the hands 
of my captors, they came after me in full force. 
In the second place, a specific charge of using 
money for bribing information was laid against 
me, and witnesses were at hand. In the third 
place, the leader of the party arrested me in 
civilian dress, but before examination and trial 
he changed to military uniform. In the fourth 
place, the officials were in such a surly mood 
that my message to the American Ambassador 
was undelivered, and at the last trial before the 

16 



A LITTLE GEEMAN SUEPEISE PAETY 

American representatives there was no apology, 
but rather the sullen attitude of those who had 
been balked in bagging their game. 

"When my captor bade me follow him I asked : 

"Can I leave word with my friends?'' For 
an answer he smiled satirically. By accident 
or design, the time chosen for my taking off was 
one when both of my two casual acquaintances 
were out of the hotel. 

"Not now, but a little later perhaps, when 
this is fixed up," my captor answered me. 

We stepped into a carriage. The two assist- 
ants at the little surprise party walked away, 
and my rising sense of fear was allayed by the 
friendly offer of a cigarette. It was a brand- 
new experience to ride away to prison in royal 
state like this. The almost pleasant attitude of 
my companion reassured me. "After all," I 
mused, "this is a lucky stroke; a little uncer- 
tain perhaps, but on the whole an interesting 
way to while away the tedium of an otherwise 
eventless birthday." 

We stopped before the Belgian Government 
building, on the Rue de la hoi, the headquarters 

17 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

of the German staff. At a word the sentries 
dropped back and my companion bade me walk 
down a long, dark corridor. I opened a door at 
the end, and fonnd myself in a room with a few 
officers in chairs, and a large array of docu- 
ments upon a table. 

The moment I came within the safe confines 
of that room the whole attitude of my captor 
changed. His mask of friendliness dropped 
away. Perhaps his spirit responded and 
adapted itself to the official atmosphere of the 
headquarters. Anyhow, at once he froze up into 
the most rigid formality. Sitting down, he 
wrote out what I deemed was the report of the 
morning's proceedings. I watched him writing 
with all the semblance and precision of a ma- 
chine, except for a half-smile that sometimes 
flickered upon his close-pressed lips. 

He was a machine, or, more precisely, a cog 
in the great fighting machine that was produc- 
ing death and destruction to Belgium. Just as 
the Germans have put men through a certain 
mold and turned out the typical German sol- 
dier, in like manner through other molds they 

18 



A LITTLE GERMAN SURPRISE PARTY 

have turned out according to pattern the Ger- 
man secret service man. He is a kind of spy- 
destroyer performing in his sphere the same 
service that the torpedo-boat destroyer does in 
its domain. This man was the German rein- 
carnation of Javert, the police inspector who 
hung so relentlessly upon the flanks of Jean 
Valjean. In his stolid silence I read an iron 
determination to l ' get ' ' me, and in that flicker- 
ing smile I saw an inhuman delight in putting 
the worst construction upon my case as he wrote 
it down. Hereafter he shall be known as Javert. 

Towards Javert I sustain a very distinct 
aversion. This is not the result of any evil 
twist put into my constitution by original sin. 
Quite the contrary. Hitherto I have always 
felt that I, like the man in Oscar Wilde's play, 
could forgive anybody anything, any time, any- 
where. One can forgive even a hangman for 
doing his duty, however it may thwart one's 
plans. Some men must play the part of prose- 
cutor and devil's advocate. 

But such was the cold, cynical delight in this 
fellow's doing his duty, such was his arrogant, 

19 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

overbearing attitude toward the helpless peas- 
ant prisoners, that I know my prayers for the 
end of the war were not motived entirely by 
selfless considerations. I am hankering to get 
into the neighborhood of this fellow when he 
doesn't hold all the trump cards. In justice 
to Javert, I must say that he reciprocated my 
feeling magnificently, and, inasmuch as he was 
the cat and I the mouse, and a very small one 
at that, he probably found much more spiritual 
satisfaction in the exercise of his feelings than 
I did in mine. That is why I was anxious to 
have the war end and embrace the first oppor- 
tunity to change our roles. I yearned to give 
him his proper place in the sun. 

Having completed my case, he demanded my 
papers, and then bade me open the door. There 
was a soldier waiting, and with him ahead 
and Javert behind, I was escorted into the 
courtyard. Here a double-door was opened, 
and I was thrust into a room filled with a mot- 
ley collection of persons guarded by a dozen 
soldiers with rifles ready. 

The sight was anything but reassuring. I 
20 



A LITTLE GERMAN SURPRISE PARTY 

turned toward Javert and asked, somewhat 
frantically, I fear: "What is all this for? 
Aren't you going to do anything about my 
case?" 

My hitherto cool, smiling manner must have 
been an irritation to him. A German official, 
especially a petty one, takes everything with 
such deadly seriousness that he can't under- 
stand us taking things so debonairly, especially 
when it is his own magisterial self. 

So I think he thoroughly enjoyed my first 
signs of perturbation, and said: "Your case 
will be settled in a little while — perhaps di- 
rectly. ' ' He turned to a soldier, bade him watch 
me, and disappeared. 

About five minutes later I heard outside the 
command "Halt!" to a squad of soldiers. The 
doors opened and Javert reappeared, this time 
in the full uniform of an officer. For the mo- 
ment I thought he had come with a firing squad 
and they were going to make short shrift of 
me. The grim humor of disposing of my case 
thus "directly" came home to me. But merely 
flicking the ashes from his cigarette, he 

21 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

glanced round the room without offering the 
slightest recognition, and then disappeared. 
How he made his change from civilian clothes 
so quickly I can't understand. It seemed like 
a vainglorious display of his uniform in order 
to let us take full cognizance of his eminence. 

I began now a survey of my surroundings. 
Our room was in fact a hallway crammed with 
soldiers and prisoners. The soldiers, with fixed 
bayonets in their rifles, stood guard at the door. 
The prisoners, some thirty-five in number, were 
ranged on benches, overturned boxes, and on 
the floor. "We were of every description, from 
well-groomed men of the city to artisans and 
peasants from the fields. The most interesting 
of the peasants was a young fellow charged with 
carrying dispatches through the lines to Ant- 
werp. The most interesting of the well-dressed 
urban group was a theater manager charged 
with making his playhouse the center of dis- 
tribution for the forbidden newspapers smug- 
gled into Brussels. There was a Belgian soldier 
in uniform, woefully battered and beaten; and 
for the first time I saw a German soldier with- 

22 



A LITTLE GERMAN SURPRISE PARTY 

out his rifle. He, too, was a prisoner waiting 
trial, having been sent up to the headquarters 
accused of muttering against an under officer. 

All these facts I learned later. Then I sat 
paralyzed in an atmosphere charged with smoke 
and silence. The smoke came not from the pris- 
oners, for to them it was forbidden, but from 
the soldiers, who rolled it up in great clouds. 
The silence came from the suspicion that one's 
next neighbor might be a spy planted there to 
catch him in some unwary statement. Each 
man would have sought relief from the strain 
by unbosoming his hopes and fears to his neigh- 
bor, but he dared not. That is one fearful curse 
of any cause that is buttressed by a system of 
espionage. It scatters everywhere the seeds of 
suspicion. All society is shot through with cyn- 
ical distrust. It poisons the springs at the very 
source — one's faith in his fellows. Ordinarily 
one regards the next man as a neighbor until 
he proves himself a spy. In Europe he is a 
scoundrel and a spy until he proves beyond the 
shadow of a doubt that he is a neighbor. 

And then one is never certain. People were 
23 



tary establishment draws spies as certainly as 
a carcass draws vermin; the one is the inevi- 
table concomitant of the other. It is the Neme- 
sis of all human brotherhood. 

Now to be taken as a prisoner of war was to 
most men more of a Godsend than a tragedy. 
The prisoner knew that he was to be corralled 
in a camp. But he was alive at any rate and 
he had but to await the end of the war — then it 
was home again. The pictures show phalanxes 
of these men smiling as if they were glad to 
be captives. On the other hand there are no 
smiles in the pictures of the spies and francs- 
tireurs. They know that they are fated for a 
hasty trial, a drumhead decision, and to be shot 
at dawn. The prospect of that walk through the 
early morning dews to the execution-ground 
made their shoulders droop along with their 
spirits. 

With these thoughts on our mind we held our 
tongues and kept our eyes on the door, wonder- 
ing who would be the next guest to arrive, and 

24 




German Prisoners Happy at Being Interned and — 




Belgian Spies and Snipers Fearful of Being Shot 



A LITTLE GEEMAN SUBPKISE PAETY 

mentally conjecturing what might be the canse 
of his incarceration. 

The last arrival wore a small American flag 
wound round his arm, and around his waist he 
wore a belt which contained 100 pounds in gold. 
He spotted me, and, coming over to my corner, 
opened up a conversation in English. I thought 
at first that this was merely a clumsy German 
ruse to trap me into some indiscreet talking. 
To his kindly advances I curtly returned 
"Yeses" and "Noes." 

His name was Obels, a Belgian by birth but 
speaking English as well as German, French, 
and Flemish. He was an invaluable reporter 
for a great Chicago paper, and in his zeal for 
news had run smack into the Germans at Ma- 
lines, and had been at once whisked off by auto- 
mobile to Brussels for trial as a spy. He had a 
passionate devotion to his calling. No mystic 
could have been more consecrated to his Holy 
Church. I fully believe that he would have con- 
sented to be shot as a spy with a smile on his 
face if he could have got the story of the shoot- 
ing to his paper. He was one of the most 

25 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

straightforth fellows I have ever met, and yet I 
regarded him there as I would a low-browed 
scoundrel. For a long time I would not speak 
to him. I dared not. He might have been a 
spy set to worm out any confidences, and then 
carry them to Javert. 

Left to himself, each man let his most pessi- 
mistic thoughts drag his spirits down. Gloom 
is contagious, and it soon became as heavy in 
the room as the gray clouds of smoke. The one 
bright, hopeful spot was the lone woman pris- 
oner. She alone refused to succumb to the de- 
pressing atmosphere, and sought to play wom- 
an's ancient role of comforter. She tried to 
smile, and succeeded admirably, for she was 
very pretty. A wretched-looking lad huddled 
up on a bag in the corner tried to reciprocate, 
but with the tears glistening in his eyes he made 
a sorry failure of it. We were a hard crowd 
to smile to, and growing tired of her attempts 
to appear light-hearted, she at last gave herself 
up to her own grievances, and soon was looking 
quite as doleful as the rest of us. Our gloom 

26 



A LITTLE GERMAN SURPRISE PARTY 

was thrown into sharp relief by a number of 
soldiers grouped around a table in the corner 
laughing and shouting over a game of cards 
Which they were playing for small stakes. We 
dragged out the long afternoon staring dog- 
gedly at the bayonets of our guards. 

Only once did the guards show any awareness 
of our existence. That was when suddenly the 
arrival of "Herr Major" was announced. As 
the door was opened to let him pass through 
our hall to the stairway, with a hoarse shout we 
were ordered to our feet. As his exalted per- 
sonage paraded by we stood, hats in hand, with 
bared heads, with such humble and respectful 
expression as may be outwardly assumed to- 
wards a. fellow-being whom all secretly despised 
or desired to Mil. "Was there really a murder- 
ous gleam in the averted eyes of those Belgians 
arrayed in salute before the Herr Major, or was 
it my imagination that put it there t Perhaps 
you can tell. 

Picture your country devastated, your towns 
burned, your flag prohibited, your farmers shot, 

27 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

your women and children terrified, your papers 
and public meetings suppressed, your streets 
patrolled by aliens with drawn swords as your 
enemies' bands triumphantly play their national 
airs. Picture, then, yourself lied about by hire- 
ling spies, thrown into prison, compelled to 
breathe foul air and sleep upon a floor, fed on 
black bread, and held day after day for sen- 
tence in nerve-racking suspense. Picture to 
yourself now the abject humiliation of being 
compelled to stand bare-headed in salute before 
these wreckers and spoilers of your land. Do 
you think you might keep back from your eyes 
sparks from that blazing rebellion in your soul? 
Then it was not imagination that made me see 
the murderous gleam in the eyes of those high- 
spirited Belgians. ''Salute the Major!" the 
Germans shouted. What seeds of hate those 
words planted in those Belgian souls the future 
will show, when they who sow the wind shall 
reap the whirlwind. 

That is the unseen horror of war; pictures 
can reveal the damage wrought by shot and 
shell, fire and flood in the blasted cities and in 

28 



A LITTLE GERMAN SURPRISE PARTY 

the fields of the dead. But nothing can ever 
show the irreparable spiritual damage wrought 
to the human soul by hates, humiliations, fears 
and undying animosities. 



29 



CHAPTEE II 

SWEATING UNDEE THE GEEMAN THIED DEGEEE 

BY this time my lark-like spirit of the morn- 
ing had folded its wings. My musings 
took on a decidedly somber tinge. "Were the 
Germans going to make a summary example of 
me to warn outsiders to cease prowling around 
the war zone?" "Was I going to be railroaded 
off to jail, or even worse?" It was no time to 
be wool gathering ! It was high time for doing. 
"But what pretexts could they find for such 
action?" At any rate I resolved to furnish as 
few pretexts as possible. 

I set to work hunting carefully through my 
pockets for everything that might furnish the 
slightest basis for any charge against me. Be- 
fore coming to Brussels I had been warned not 
to carry anything that might be the least incrim- 
inating, and there was not much on me ; but I 
did have a pass from the Belgian commander 

30 



SWEATING UNDER THIRD DEGREE 

giving me access to the Antwerp fortifications. 
I had figured on framing it as a souvenir of my 
adventures, but my molars now reduced it to an 
unrecognizable pulp. Cards of introduction 
from French and English friends fared a simi- 
lar fate. Their remains were disposed of in the 
shuffling that accompanied the arrival of new 
prisoners. This had to be done most craftily, 
for we never knew where were the spying eyes. 

About six o 'clock I was resting from my mas- 
ticatory labors when Javert presented himself, 
accompanied by two soldiers. I was led away 
into the council room where first I had been 
taken in the morning. It was now turned into 
a trial chamber. Javert, as prosecutor, was 
seated on one side of the table, while around the 
farther end were ranged some officers and a few 
men in civilian clothes who proved to be secret 
service agents. I stood until the judge bade me 
take my seat at the vacant end of the table. 

One by one my documents were disposed of 
— an American passport issued in London; a 
permit from the German Consul at Maastricht, 
Holland, to enter "the territory of Belgium- 

31 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

Germany," finally, this letter of introduction 

from the American Consulate at Ghent: 

Consulat Americain. 

Gand le 22 Septembre, 1914. 
Le Consul des Etats Unis d Amerique a Gand, prie 
Messieurs les autorites de bien vouloir laisser passer 
le porteur de la presente Monsieur Albert Williams 
citoyen Americain. Julius Van Hee, 

Consul Americain. 

I pointed to the recent date on it, the 22nd 
of September, and to the signer of it, Julius 
van Hee. 

Van Hee was a man who met the Germans 
on their own ground. He informed the Ger- 
man officer at his hotel: "If you send any spy 
prowling into my room, I'll take off my coat 
and proceed to throw him out of the window. ' ' 
Shirt-sleeves diplomat indeed! Another time 
he requested permission to take three Belgian 
women through the lines to their family in 
Bruges. The German commandant said "No." 
"All right," said Van Hee, taking out a pack- 
age of letters from captured German officers 
who were now in the hands of the Belgians, and 
dangling the packet before the commandant, 

32 



SWEATING UNDER THIRD DEGREE 

"If I don't get that permit, you don't get these 
letters." He got the permit. 

After a few such clashes the invaders learned 
that when it came to this SchrecMichkeit busi- 
ness they had no monopoly on the article. Van 
Hee's name was not to be trifled with. But on 
the other hand there must necessarily have 
existed a certain resentment against him for 
his ruthless and effective diplomacy. It would 
no doubt afford Javert a pleasant sensation to 
take it out on any one appearing in any way as 
a protege of Van Hee. 

"Yes, it's Van Hee's signature all right," 
muttered Javert with a shrug of his shoulders, 
"only he is not the consul, but the vice-consul 
at Ghent and let us remember that he is of 
Belgian ancestry — that wouldn't incline him to 
deep friendship with us." 

On a card of introduction from Ambassador 
Van Dyke there were the words "Writer for 
The Outlook/' It's hard to understand how 
that escaped my very scrutinous search, but 
there it was. 

"Another anti-German magazine," Javert 
33 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

commented, sardonically. I was marveling at 
the nncanny display of knowledge of this man 
at the center of the European maelstrom, aware 
of the editorial policy of an American magazine. 

"But that doesn't mean that I am anti-Ger- 
man," I protested; "we can retain our own pri- 
vate opinions." 

"Tommyrot," exclaimed Javert, "tommy- 
rot!" Strange language in a military court! 
Where had he laid hold of that choice bit of our 
vernacular? 

"You know perchance," he continued, "what 
the penalty is for newspaper men caught on the 
German side." I thought that surely I was 
going to reap the result of the adverse reports 
that the American correspondents had made al- 
ready about the Germans, when he added, "But 
you are here on a different charge. ' ' 

The judge started to cross-examine me as to 
all my antecedents. My replies were in German 
— or purported to be — but in my eagerness to 
clear myself I must have wrought awful havoc 
with that classic language. I was forthwith or- 
dered to talk English and direct my remarks to 

34 



SWEATING UNDER THIRD DEGREE 

Javert, acting now as interpreter. In the midst 
of this procedure Javert, with a quick sudden 
stroke, produced the scribble-paper which he 
had seized in the morning, held it fairly in my 
face, and cried, " Whose writing is that?" The 
others all riveted their gaze upon me. 

I replied calmly, "It is mine. ,, 

"I want you to put it into full, complete writ- 
ing," cried Javert. "As it now stands it is a 
telegraphic code. ' ' 

That is the most complimentary remark that 
has ever been made upon my hieroglyphics. 
However, I shall be eternally grateful to Provi- 
dence for my Horace Greeley style. For, while 
that document contained by no means any mili- 
tary secrets, there were, on the other hand, un- 
complimentary observations about the Germans. 
It would not be good strategy to let these fall 
into their hands in their present mood. At 
Javert 's behest, I set to work on my paper, and 
delivered to him in ten minutes a free, full, 
rapid translation of the abbreviated contents. 
On inspecting it Javert said, irritably, ' ' I want 
an exact, precise transcript of everything here. ' ' 

35 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

"I thought you wanted it in a hurry," I re- 
joined. 

' ' No hurry at all. We have ample time to fix 
your case. ' ' 

These words do not sound a bit threatening, 
but it was the general setting in which they 
were said that made them so ominous, and 
which set the cold waves rippling up and down 
my spinal column. 

I set to work again, numbering every phrase 
in my scribble-paper, and then in the same num- 
ber on the other paper giving a full, readable 
translation of it. I wrote out the things com- 
plimentary to the Germans in the fullest man- 
ner. But how was I going to take the sting out 
of the adverse comments? 

Phrase No. 1 meant "Musical nature of the 
German automobile horns." Their silver and 
flute-like notes had been a pleasing sound, roll- 
ing along the roads. That was good. 

Phrase No. 2 meant ■ ' The moderation of the 
Germans in not billeting more troops upon the 
hotels." I wondered why they had not com- 
mandeered quarters in more of the big empty 

36 



SWEATING UNDER THIRD DEGREE 

hotels instead of compelling men to sleep in rail- 
way stations and in the open air. That was 
good. 

yuA. 9^il ^^ ^J^^c 2l©1t*fc. 

Phrase No. 3 meant "German officers never 
refused to contribute to the Belgian Relief 
Funds." These boxes were constantly shaken 
before them in every cafe, and not once was a 
box passed to an officer in vain. For all this I 

37 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

was very grateful and everything went on very 
merrily until I came to phrase Number 4. 

"If Bel I wld join posse Ger myself" ; which, 
being interpreted, reads, "If I were a Belgian, I 
would join a posse against the Germans my- 
self. ' ' That looked ugly, but I wanted to record 
for myself the ugly mood of resentment I had 
felt when I saw Belgians compelled to submit to 
certain humiliations and indignities from their 
invading conquerors. 

German or non-German — it makes no differ- 
ence; any one who had seen those swaggering 
officers riding it rough-shod over those poor 
peasants would have felt the same tide of in- 
dignation mounting up in him. In that mood 
it would have given me genuine pleasure to 
have joined a little killing-party and wiped out 
those officers. Now these self-same officers were 
gathered round me trying to decide whether 
they were to have a little killing-party on their 
own account. 

There was sufficient justification for inciting 
their wrath in that one sentence as it stood, and 
they were all combining to entrap me by every 

38 



SWEATING UNDER THIRD DEGREE 

possible means. Furthermore, they were hank- 
ering for a victim. I had only my wits to match 
against their desires. I cudgeled my brains as 
I never did before, but to no avail. Almost 
panic-stricken I was ready to give up in despair 
and throw myself upon the mercy of the court 
when, like a flash of inspiration, the right read- 
ing came. I transcribed that ugly phrase now 
to read: "If I were among the Belgians, I 
would join possibly the Germans myself." 
What more could the most ardent German pa- 
triot ask for 1 That met every abbreviation and 
made a beautifully exact reversal of the in- 
tended meaning. Not as an example in ethics, 
but as a "safety first" exhibit I must confess to 
a real pride in that piece of work. I handed 
it over with the cherubic expression of the prize- 
scholar in the Sunday School. 

Javert had figured on finding incriminating 
data in it. It was to be his chief evidence. He 
read it over with increasing disappointment and 
gave it the minutest analysis, comparing it 
closely with the original scribble-paper. For 
example, he called the attention of the judge to 

39 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

the fact that "guarded" in one paper was 
spelled "gaurded" in the other — some slip I 
had inadvertently made. He thought it might 
now be made a clew to some secret code, but, 
though he puzzled long and searchingly over 
the document, he extracted from it nothing more 
than an increased vexation of spirit. 

"Nothing on the surface here," Javert said 
to the judge; "but that only makes it look the 
more suspicious. Wait till we hear from the 
search of his room." 

At this juncture a man in civilian dress ar- 
rived, and, handing over the key of Room Num- 
ber 502, reported that there was nothing to 
bring back. This nettled Javert, and he made 
and X-ray examination of my person, even tear- 
ing out the lining of my hat. Alas for him ! too 
late ; his search disclosed nothing more damna- 
tory than a French dictionary, which, because 
I was not an ostrich, I had been unable to get 
away with in the afternoon. A few addresses 
had been scribbled therein. He demanded a 
full account of each name. Some I had really 
forgotten. 

40 



SWEATING UNDER THIRD DEGREE 

"That's strange," he sneered; "perhaps you 
don't find it convenient to remember who they 
are. ' ' 

Up till now I hadn't the slightest conception 
of the charge laid against me. Suddenly the 
judge crashed into the affair and took the in- 
itiative. 

"Why did you offer money to find out the 
movement of German troops?" he let go at me 
across the table in a loud voice. 

At the same time his aides converged on me 
a full, searching gaze. Going all day without 
food, for eight hours confined in a fetid atmos- 
phere, and for two hours grilled by a dozen in- 
quisitors, is an ordeal calculated to put the 
nerves of the strongest on edge. 

I simply replied, "I didn't do any such 
thing. ' ' 

" Don 't lie !"" Tell the whole truth ! " " Make 
a clean breast of it!" "No use holding any- 
thing back ! " " We have the witnesses who will 
swear you did ! " " Best thing for you is to tell 
all you know!" 

This fusillade of command and accusation 
41 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

they roared and bellowed at me, aiming to break 
down my defense with the suddenness of the 
onslaught. They succeeded for a moment. I 
couldn't rally my scattered and worn-out wits 
to think what the basis of this preposterous 
charge might be. 

Then I remembered a Dutchman who had ac- 
costed me the day before on a street-car. He 
had volunteered the information that he was 
taking people by automobile out through Liege 
into Holland, giving one thus the opportunity 
to see a great many troops and ruins along the 
way. I told him I had some money and would 
be glad to invest in such a trip, at the same time 
giving him my address at the Hotel Metropole. 
Guileless as he appeared, he turned out to be 
an agent of the German Government. He natu- 
rally wanted to make himself solid with his mas- 
ters by delivering the goods, so he had twisted 
all my words into the most damning evidence, 
and had fixed up two or three witnesses ready 
to swear anything. 

"No use wasting time or effort to save this 
man," they told de Leval at the American Em- 

42 



SWEATING UNDER THIRD DEGREE 

bassy, later. "We've got a cast-iron case 
against him, with witnesses to back it up." 

Javert no doubt proved himself an invaluable 
ally of the Dutchman in fixing up the charges. 
I don't believe he would manufacture a story 
out of whole cloth, but once his mind was set 
in a certain direction he could build up a good 
one on very shaky foundations. Perhaps he 
had an animus against these bumptious, undef- 
erential, overcritical Americans, and thought it 
was time to give one of them a lesson. Per- 
haps he was tired of trapping ordinary garden 
variety spies of the Belgian brand. It would 
be a pleasing variation in the monotony of con- 
victing defenseless, helpless Belgians if he could 
show that one of these fellows masquerading as 
Americans was a sham. Especially one of that 
journalistic tribe that had been sending out re- 
ports of German atrocities. Furthermore, it 
would redound greatly to his professional glory 
to hand me over to the General with a case 
proved to the hilt. 

There was no trick in the repertory of a 
prosecutor that was unknown to Javert. He 

43 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

now shifted to the confidential and dropping his 
voice very low, he said to me : 

''You know that if you make a full, complete 
confession, I'll promise to do my very best for 
you. And as a matter of fact you have been 
under the eyes of our Secret Service ever since 
you came to Belgium. We are aware of every- 
thing that you have done." 

Was that a bluff or the truth? If it was true 
then they knew about my capture near Louvain 
on the day before in suspicious observation of 
the signaling-balloon. If this was a bluff, then 
my confession would be simply a case of gratu- 
itously damning myself and likewise endanger- 
ing my companion of yesterday's adventure — 
the British lieutenant with the American pass- 
port. Yet again if Javert knew all he pretended 
to, silence about that episode would make it ap- 
pear doubly heinous. So while with my tongue 
I retailed a simple, harmless version of my do- 
ings in Belgium in my brain I carried on a de- 
bate whether to make an avowal of the Louvain 
escapade or not. 

I came to the decision that Javert was just 
44 



SWEATING UNDER THIRD DEGREE 

bluffing. Later developments proved me right. 
He knew nothing about it. Even the German 
Secret Service is not omniscient. Getting no 
results then from these wheedling tactics Javert 
shifted back to his bullying and essayed once 
more to browbeat me into a confession. Calling 
to his aid two officers who had been but casual 
onlookers they began volleying charges at me 
with machine-gun rapidity. 

"You know that you are a spy." "We know 
that you are a, spy. " " Why do you deny it I " 
"You know that you have been lying." "Bet- 
ter own up to all that you have done." "Out 
with it now!" 

When one officer grew tired, he rested. Then 
the next one took up the attack, and then he 
rested. But not one moment's respite for me. 
I don't know what they call it in German, but 
it was the third degree with a vengeance. Un- 
der this sweating process my nerves were being 
torn to tatters. I felt like screaming and it 
seemed that if this continued I would smash an 
officer with a chair and put an end to it all. But 
the fact that I am writing these lines shows 

45 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEBMAN EAGLE 

that I didn't. Human nature is so constituted 
that it can always endure a little more, and 
though they kept the tension high for many min- 
utes I did not buckle under the strain. How- 
ever, I couldn't call up any arguments to show 
the utter absurdity of the charge against me. 
And my defense was very feeble. 

The onslaught now ceased as suddenly as it 
had begun. There was a coming and going of 
officers and some consultation in an undertone. 
The judge left the room and the impassive- 
faced Javert began that machine-like writing. 
After a while he stopped. 

"Will you give me some idea of what you ex- 
pect to do with me?" I queried. 

"A full report of your case goes up to the 
General for decision and sentence, ' ' was his re- 
sponse. . 

My spirits took a downward plunge. Then 
a fierce resentment amounting almost to rage 
came surging up within me. Masking it as well 
as I could, I asked permission to send word to 
the American authorities. Javert 's reply was 
evasive. 

46 



SWEATING UNDER THIRD DEGREE 

"I have had nothing to eat all day," I an- 
nounced. "Can't you do something for me?" 

"Go to that door there and open it," said 
Javert. 

I did so and there stood four soldiers of the 
Kaiser, who ranged themselves two in front and 
two behind, and marched me away. Javert had 
a well-developed sense of the dramatic. 

While I am excoriating Javert as representing 
the genius of German officialdom, it is only fair 
that I should present his antithesis. By con- 
tinually referring to the German army as a ma- 
chine one gets the idea, that it is an impersonal 
collection of inhuman beings remorselessly and 
mechanically devoted to duty. For a broad gen- 
eral impression that is perhaps a fair enough 
statement to start with ; but when I am tempted 
to let it go at that, there is one striking excep- 
tion that always rises up to point the finger of 
denial at this easy and common generalization. 

It is that of a young German officer, a mere 
stripling of twenty or thereabouts, with the 
most frank, open, ingenuous expression. One 
would expect to find him presiding at a Chris- 

47 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

tian Endeavor social, rather than right here at 
the very pivot of the most terrible military or- 
ganization of the world. 

I had caught his look riveted upon me in my 
trial, and recognized him when he came into 
the detention-room, to which the four soldiers 
had led me. Hurriedly, he said to me : "Really, 
you know, I ought not to come in here, but I 
heard your story, and it looks rather bad; but 
somehow I almost believe in you. Tell me the 
whole truth about your affair." 

I proceeded ^vehemently to point out my in- 
nocence, when he interrupted my story by ask- 
ing, ' ' But why did you make that Schreibfehler 
on your paper?" He followed my recital anx- 
iously and sympathetically, and, looking me full 
in the face, asked, "Can you tell me on your 
Ehrenwort (word of honor) that you are not a 
spy? Remember," he added, solemnly, "on 
your Ehrenwort." 

Grasping both of his hands and looking him 
in the eye, I said, most fervently, "On my 
Ehrenwort, I am not a spy." 

There was an earnestness in my heart that 
48 



SWEATING UNDER THIRD DEGREE 

must have communicated itself to my hands, be- 
cause he winced as he drew his hands away ; but 
he said, ' ' I shall try to put in a word for you ; 
I can't do much, but I shall do what I can. I 
must go now. Good-by." 



49 



CHAPTER III 

A NIGHT ON A PRISON" FLOOR 

""PRISONERS are to be taken over into the 

A left wing for the night, ' ' said an orderly 
to the guards. 

We had scarcely turned the corner, when an 
officer cried: "Not that way, dummkopf!" 

"Our orders are for the left wing, sir," said 
the orderly. 

"Never saw such a set of damned block- 
heads!" yelled the officer in exasperation. 
"Can't you tell the difference between right 
and left? Right wing, right wing, and hurry 
up!" 

A little emery had gotten into the perfect- 
running machine. The corridors fairly clanged 
with orders and counter orders. After much 
confusion the general mix-up of prisoners was 

50 



A NIGHT ON A PRISON FLOOR 

straightened out and we were served black 
bread and coffee. 

The strain of the day, along with the fever 
I had from exposure on the battlefields, made 
the rough food still more uninviting, especially 
as our only implements of attack were the 
greasy pocketknives of the peasants and can- 
teen covers from the soldiers. The revolt of 
my stomach must have communicated itself to 
my soul. I determined for aggressive action on 
my own behalf. I resolved to stand unprotest- 
ing no longer while a solid case against me was 
being constructed. Not without a struggle was 
I to be railroaded off to prison or to Purgatory. 
Pushing up to the next officer appearing in the 
room, in firm but courteous tones I requested, 
as an American citizen, the right to communi- 
cate with the American authorities. 

He replied very decently that that was quite 
within my privileges, and forthwith the oppor- 
tunity would be accorded me. I was looking 
for paper, when there came the order for all of 
us to move out into the courtyard. With a line 
of soldiers on either side, we were marched 

51 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

through labyrinthine passages and up three 
flights of stairs. Here we were divided into 
two gangs, my gang being led off into a room 
already nearly filled. We were told that it was 
our temporary abode, and we were to make the 
best of it. It was an administrative office of 
the Belgian Government now turned into a 
prison. There were the usual fixtures, includ- 
ing a rug on the floor and shelves of books. Ours 
was only one of many cells for prisoners scat- 
tered through the building. The spy-hunters 
had swooped down upon every suspect in Bel- 
gium and all who had been caught in the drag- 
net were being dumped into these rooms. 

We were thus informed by the officer whose 
wards we were. He was a fussy, quick-tem- 
pered, withal kind-hearted little fellow, and kept 
dashing in and out of the room, really perplexed 
over housing accommodations for the night. 
The spy-hunters had been successful in their 
work of rounding up their victims from all over 
the country and corralling them here until the 
place was filled to overflowing. Our official in 
charge was puffed up with pride in the prosper- 

52 



A NIGHT ON A PRISON FLOOR 

ity of his institution, on the one hand, and, on 
the other hand, petulantly belectured us on add- 
ing ourselves to his already numerous burdens. 
This was highly humorous, yet we all feared to 
commit lese-majeste by expressing to him our 
collective and personal sorrow for so inconveni- 
encing him, and our willingness to make amends 
for our thoughtlessness in getting arrested. 

After more hesitation than I had hitherto 
observed, arrangements for the night were com- 
pleted and we were ordered to draw out blan- 
kets from the pile in the corner. The new ar- 
rivals and the old inmates maneuvered for the 
softest spots on the floor, which was soon cov- 
ered over with bodies and their sprawling limbs, 
while a host of guards, fully armed, were posted 
at the door and along the hall. 

"I would give my right arm or my leg if I 
could get a flashlight of this," said Obels, the 
reporter, enthusiastically. This elation made 
him reckless as he went about, probing the ex- 
periences of each victim. 

''Great stuff!" "Great stuff!" he kept ex- 
53 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEBMAN EAGLE 

claiming. "Won't this open up some eyes in 
Chicago, eh?" 

He couldn't believe that the Providence which 
had led him to this Bonanza would now deny 
him the opportunity of getting out some of this 
wealth. 

In the midst of these activities he was haled 
before the tribunal. He returned, the spring 
out of his step and his zest for stories quite 
gone. Javert had successively branded him an 
"Idiot" a "Liar" and a "Spy." 

The information that several of the inmates 
had been imprisoned for a month or more 
spurred my drooping spirits and put me into 
action. I uncovered a pile of the office writing- 
paper and, with the aid of the Belgian who could 
speak English, I set to work preparing a let- 
ter to Ambassador Whitlock. Whether Javert 
was apprised of the doings of his charges or not 
I do not know, but in the midst of my writing he 
glided into the room, and, pouncing upon my 
manuscript, gathered it to himself, saying, "I'll 
take these. ' ' My Belgian friend protested that 
a superior officer had given me permission to do 

54 



A NIGHT ON A PRISON FLOOR 

this. Javert handed back the paper, smiled, 
and disappeared. Knowing that every word 
would be closely scrutinized at the Staff Office, 
and that the least hint of anything derogatory 
to the German authorities would keep the letter 
in the building, I couched it in as pointed and 
telling terms as possible, having in mind the 
eyes of the Germans, quite as much as the Am- 
bassador. 

Brand Whitlock, 

United States Ambassador, 
Brussels. 
Dear Sir: 

As a native American citizen, born in Ohio, and 
now imprisoned by the German authorities, I claim 
your intervention in my behalf. I am thirty years of 
age, resident of East Boston, Massachusetts, for six 
years. I am a graduate of Marietta College, Hartford 
Seminary, and studied in Cambridge University in 
England, and Marburg University in Germany. 

Saturday Mr. Van Hee, the American consul at 
Ghent, brought me here by automobile with Mr. 
Fletcher. Obliged to take back in his car three ladies 
for whom he obtained permission from the German 
Government, I was necessarily left behind ; Mr. Van 
Hee promising to return for me when diplomatic busi- 
ness brought him to Brussels in a few days. Mean- 

55 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEBMAN EAGLE 

time I took a room at the Hotel Metropole. From 
it I was taken by the German authorities this morn- 
ing. I do not know exactly what the charge against 
me is. I am accused of offering money for informa- 
tion relative to the movement of the German troops. 
I think that the man who worked up the case against 
me is a Dutchman with whom I spoke upon a car. 
He volunteered the information that he had been 
everywhere by automobile; and I asked him if he 
was the one who carried passengers out of Brussels 
by way of Liege and Aix-la-Chapelle. Won't you 
look into my case at once? Mr. Fletcher, who called 
on you Saturday, lent me some fifty dollars, so I am 
all right that way ; but this is not a comfortable situ- 
ation to be in, though the officers are very decent. 
If you want proof of my identity, you can communi- 
cate with the following people in America; they are 
my personal friends, and will confirm my absence 
from home on an extended vacation. 

His Excellency Governor Walsh, of the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts ; Dr. Charles Fleischer, Chief 
Rabbi in the Rabbinate of New England. 

(If there was any Jewish blood on the Ger- 
man Staff I was going to try to get the benefit 
of it.) 

The Honorable George W. Coleman, of the Ford 
Hall Convocation Meetings and President of the Pil- 

56 



A NIGHT ON A PRISON FLOOR 

grim Amalgamated Associated Advertising Clubs of 
America. 



(Coleman being a cross between a Baptist 
deacon and an anarchist, I knew that he would 
not object to this bit of sabotage.) 

The Right Honorable William W. Mills, Esquire, 
President of the First National Bank of Marietta, 
Ohio, Treasurer of the University of Marietta, and 
Member of the National Council of Congregational 
Churches of America, etc., etc. 

If you will cablegram any of these, you will get an 
immediate reply. While I have no money for this 
now, I feel certain Mr. Fletcher, who is associated 
with Mr. Lane, of the United States Cabinet, will back 
you up, and there will be unlimited funds in America. 

Sincerely yours, 
Albert R. Williams. 

My attention has been called to the omission 
of the Angel Gabriel, Mary Pickford and Ty 
Cobb from the list of my intimate friends in 
the above document. That was not meant as a 
slight — purely an oversight. At any rate, I felt 
that the long list of men whose names were 
written here would make the right response to 

57 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEBMAN EAGLE 

any cablegram. To atone for dragging them 
into the affray I call attention to the highly 
deferential and decorative manner in which I 
referred to them. Be it remembered that this 
document was prepared qnite as much for Ger- 
man eyes as for the Ambassador's, and nothing 
gives a man standing and respect in the Teu- 
tonic mind as much as a name fearfully and 
wonderfully adorned. I resolved that my im- 
portance was not to suffer from lack of glory in 
my friends. I bestowed more honorary degrees 
on them than the average small college does in 
ten commencements. So lavish was I that my 
friends hardly recognize their own titular selves. 
An officer designated the guard who would 
deliver the letter. I gave it to him along with 
a franc, which he protestingly accepted. He 
reported that it was delivered to Javert. That 
was the last I ever heard from that message. 
I imagine that it was by no means the last that 
the German authorities heard from it, for when 
I related the story to the Ambassador some time 
later I saw a characteristic Brand Whitlock let- 
ter a-brewing. My message to Vice-Consul Nae- 

58 



A NIGHT ON A PRISON FLOOR 

smith and to the Hotel Metropole shared a like 
fate — they were "undelivered. 

I simply offer the facts as they are. It may 
be that the courtesies of polite interconrse are 
not easy to observe in war. Certainly they were 
not obtrusive in Belgium. In extenuation it 
may be said that the Brussels postmen had 
struck about this time; but, on the other hand, 
through the forbidden shutters I saw fully fifty 
German Boy Scouts marshaled in the court- 
yard below. 

I had noticed them before as messengers go- 
ing down the most unguarded by-ways of the 
slums, quite as if they were agents of a wel- 
comed instead of hated army. They rode along 
serenely as if totally unconscious of the shining 
targets that they made. I felt certain that no 
American gang would let slip this opportunity 
for the heaving of a brick. Were Brussels 
boys made of flabbier stuff? Not if Belgian 
sons were of the same stripe as Belgian fa- 
thers. The fact then that none of these German 
Scouts were massacred, as was to be expected 
by all the rules of the game, showed how the 

59 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

threat of reprisals operated to curb the strong- 
est natural impulses of the spirit. I presumed 
that one of these Scouts was speeding" post- 
haste to the Ambassador with my note, but he 
never did. 

I am not berating the Germans. They were 
running their own war according to their own 
code. In this code reporters, onlookers, and 
uplifters of any brand were anathema. 

We had no rights. Our only right was to 
the convictions within our minds, provided we 
kept them there. I believe that were it not for 
the surmises of the English lieutenant who took 
them to the Ambassador I would be in prison 
yet. On second thought, I wouldn't, either. I 
couldn't have endured the strain much longer. 
If I had been caged in there a few hours more 
than I was, in my nervous tension I probably 
would have vented my sense of outraged justice 
by assaulting one of the officers myself. I 
wouldn't have had a long time then to specu- 
late upon the immortality of the soul. I would 
have possessed first-hand information. One can 
understand why, for their own protection, the 

60 



A NIGHT ON A PRISON FLOOR 

Germans imposed their iron laws upon the Bel- 
gians with their terrible penalties. What is hard 
to understand is the long- suffering patience 
and self-restraint of the Belgians. Occasionally 
some high-spirited or high-strung fellow was no 
longer able to keep the lid on the volcano of 
hatred and rage seething within him. This blow- 
up brought down, not only upon his own head, 
but upon the whole community, the most hideous 
reprisals. 

By the time my writing was completed the 
men were pretty well settled down for the night. 
On the outside the roaring of the Austrian guns, 
which for days had been bombarding their way 
into Antwerp, now became less constant; less 
and less frequently the hoarse commands of 
the officers, mingled with the rumbling of the 
automobiles, came up from the courtyard below. 
At midnight the only sounds were the groans 
and moans of the twisting sleepers and the 
measured tread of the sentry as he paced up 
and down the hall, his silhouette darkening at 
regular intervals the glass door at the end of 
our little room. 

61 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

I was placed in a sort of adjoining closet with 
six others. A motley mixture indeed; a Rus- 
sian, an American, four Belgians, and a German 
— all prisoners awaiting our sentences. As a 
last move, the German soldier guards sand- 
wiched themselves into the open spaces on the 
floor, their long bayonets glistening in the elec- 
tric light that blazed down upon us. The peas- 
ants had characteristically closed the windows 
to keep out the baneful night air. In the main 
room a drop-light with shade flung its radiance 
on a table and lit up the anxious faces of the 
few men gathered round it. It showed one poor 
fellow bolt upright, unspeaking, unmoving, his 
fixed white eyeballs staring into space, as 
though he would go stark mad. Those eyes 
have forever burned themselves into my brain, 
a pitiful protest against a mad, wild world at 
war. 

Sleep was entirely out of the question with 
me. It wasn't the bad air or the hard floor or 
the snores of my comrades, but just plain cold 
fear. Now I possess an average amount of 
courage. Quite alone I walked in and out of 

62 



A NIGHT ON A PRISON FLOOR 

Liege when the Germans were painting the skies 
red with the burning towns. My ribs were mas- 
saged all the way by ends of revolvers, whose 
owners demanded me to give forthwith my rea- 
sons for being there, they being sole arbiters of 
whether my reasons were good or bad. I got so 
used to a bayonet pointing into the pit of my 
stomach that it hardly looks natural in a vertical 
position. 

But this was a thrust from a different quar- 
ter. In the open a man feels a sporting chance, 
at any rate, even if a bullet can beat him on the 
run; but cooped up within four walls he is 
paralyzed by his horrible helplessness. He 
feels that a military court reverses ordinary 
procedure, holding that it is better for nine in- 
nocent to suffer than for one guilty one to es- 
cape. He knows that his fate is in the hands 
of a tribunal from whose arbitrary decision 
there is no appeal, and that decision he knows 
may depend upon the whim of the command- 
ant, to whom a poor breakfast or a bad night's 
sleep may give the wrong twist. The terrible 
uncertainty of it preys upon one's mind. 

63 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

I certainly prayed that the commandant was 
getting a better night than mine, as I lay there 
staring up at the electric light with a hundred 
hates and fears ponnding through my "brain. 
"I'm a prisoner," was one thought. "Suppos- 
ing the silence of the guns means that the Ger- 
mans, "beaten, are being pressed back into Brus- 
sels by the Allies. They may let us go. No, 
the Germans, maddened by defeat, might order 
us all to be shot," was one idea. "How does it 
feel to be blindfolded and stood up against a 
wall by a firing squad?" was another pleasant 
companion idea that kept vigil with me through 
the midnight hours. Then my fancies took a 
frenzied turn, "Suppose these be brutes of sol- 
diers and they run us through, saying we were 
trying to escape." 

"Escape!" The word no sooner leaped into 
my mind than an almost uncontrollable impulse 
to escape seized me, or at least I thought one 
had. I got upon my feet, observing that the two 
soldiers lying beside me on the floor were fast 
asleep and the guards at the outer door were 

64 



A NIGHT ON A PEISON FLOOE 

nodding. I stepped over their sleeping forms 
and made a reconnoiter of the hallway. There 
in the semi-darkness stood seven soldiers of the 
Kaiser with their seven gnns and their seven 
glistening bayonets. 

Cold steel is not supposed to act as a soothing 
syrup ; but one glance at those bayonets and my 
uncontrollable impulse utterly vanished. You 
will observe that the bayonet is continually 
cropping up in my story. It does, indeed. A 
bayonet looks far different from what it did on 
dress parade. Meet one in war, and its true sig- 
nificance first dawns upon you. It is not simply 
a decoration at the end of a rifle, but it is made 
to stick in a man's stomach and then be turned 
round ; and when you realize that this particular 
one is made to stick in your particular stomach, 
it takes on a still different aspect. 

I crawled back into my lair, resolved to seek 

for deliverance by mental means, rather than by 

physical; and as the first rays of light stole 

through the window I composed the following 

document to His Excellency: 

65 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

The Officer who has the case of the American, Albert 

B. Williams, under supervision: 
Sir: 

As you seem willing to be fair in hearing my case, 
may I take the liberty this morning of addressing 
you upon my charge ? I fear that I made but a fee- 
ble defense of myself yesterday; but when I was 
accused of offering much money for information rela- 
tive to the movements of German troops, the accusa- 
tion came so suddenly that I could only deny it. 
May I now offer a few observations upon this charge, 
the nature of which just begins to become clear to 
me? 

In the first place, it was a sheer impossibility for 
me to offer "much money," because all I had was 
that which, as Mr. Van Hee knows, Mr. Fletcher gave 
me when I was left behind. 

In the second place, were I a spy, I certainly would 
not be offering money in a voice loud enough to be 
heard by the several witnesses that you have ready 
to testify. 

In the third place, while not attempting to impeach 
the character of my accuser, may I submit the fact 
that my own standing will be vouched for by His Ex- 
cellency the Governor of Massachusetts, the President 
of the Pilgrim Amalgamated Associated Advertising 
Clubs of America, the chief Rabbi in the Rabbinate 
of New England, etc., etc. 

These men will attest the utter absurdity of any 
such charge being made against me. 

66 



A NIGHT ON A PRISON FLOOE 

In the last place, may I suggest that the theory of 
an unintentional mistake throws the best light upon 
the ease ? For any conversation with my accuser was 
either in German or English. You know my German 
linguistic ability and the error that might be made 
there ; and as for English, I challenge my accuser to 
understand three consecutive sentences in English. 

I trust you will take these facts into account before 
sentence is passed upon me. 

Respectfully yours, 

Albert R. "Williams. 

By the time this was finished a stir in the 
courtyard below heralded the beginning of the 
day's activities. And what did this day hold in 
store for me 1 



67 



CHAPTER IV 



ROULETTE AND LIBERTY 



^TTR morning- toilet was completed with the 
aid of one small, flimsy towel for thirty of 
us. Hot water tinctured with coffee and milk 
was served from a bucket with two or three 
cups. Bread which had been saved from the 
previous day was brought forth from pockets 
and hiding-places, and for some unaccountable 
reason a piece of good butter was brought in. 
Apparently the Germans were trying to escape 
the stigma of mistreating or underfeeding their 
prisoners. 

Orders were given to get ready to move out. 
After an hour, they were changed to "Clean 
up the room. ' ' When we had accomplished this, 
an inspecting officer entered and began to sniff 
and snort until his eyes fairly blazed with 
wrath, and then in a torrent of words he ex- 

68 



EOULETTE AND LIBERTY 

pressed his private and official opinion of us. 
So fast and freely did his language flow that 
I couldn't catch all the compliments he showered 
upon us; but "Verdammte!" "Donnerwetter!" 
and " Schwein!" were stressed frequently 
enough for me to retain a distinct memory of 
the same. One did not have to be a German 
linguist to get the drift of his remarks. 

They had an electric effect upon the pris- 
oners, who with one accord got busy picking 
up microscopic and invisible bits from the floor. 
To see these men crawling around upon their 
stomachs must have been highly gratifying to 
His Self -inflated Highness. The highly gratify- 
ing thing to myself now is the fact that I did not 
do any crawling, but sat stolidly in my chair and 
stared back at him, letting my indignation get 
enough the better of my discretion even to sneer 
— at least I persuade myself now that I did. 
Outside of this little act of gallantry I am heart- 
ily ashamed of my conduct at the German Staff 
Headquarters. It was too acquiescent and ob- 
sequious for some of those bureaucrats rough- 

69 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

riding it over those helpless, long-suffering, 
beaten Belgians. 

Having called us "Schwein," at high noon 
they brought in the swill. It was a gray, putrid- 
looking mess in a big, battered bucket. They 
told us that it came dried in bags and all that 
was necessary was to mix the contents with hot 
water. The mixture was put up in 1911 and 
guaranteed to keep for 20 years. It looked as 
though it might have already forfeited on its 
guarantee. There was nothing to serve it with, 
and search of the room uncovered no imple- 
ments of attack. Our discomfiture furnished a 
young soldier with much entertainment. 

''Nothing to eat your stew with? Well, just 
stand on that table there and dive right into 
the bucket." 

He was quite carried away with his own wit- 
ticism, so that in sheer good nature he went 
and returned with six soup plates which were 
covered over with a thick grease quite impervi- 
ous to cold water. I had my misgivings about 
the mess and dreaded its steaming odors. At 
last I summoned up courage and approached the 

70 



ROULETTE AND LIBERTY 

bucket, using my fingers in lieu of a clothes-pin 
as a defense for my olfactory nerves. A sur- 
prise was in store for me ; its palatability and 
quality were quite the opposite of its appear- 
ance. While I wouldn't enjoy that stew out- 
side of captivity, and while the Brussels men 
refused in any way to succumb to its charm, it 
was at least very nutritious and furnished the 
strength to keep fighting. 

But it is hard to battle against the blues, espe- 
cially when all one's comrades capitulate to 
them. Each man vied with the other in radi- 
ating a blue funk, until the air was as thick as 
a London fog. 

Picture, if you will, the scene. By a fine 
irony, the books on the shelves were on interna- 
tional law, and by a finer irony the book in 
green binding that caught my eye as it stood out 
from the black array of volumes was R. Dim- 
mont's "The Origins of Belgian Neutrality." 
The Belgians who were enjoying the peculiar 
blessings of that neutrality were sprawled over 
the floor or pacing restlessly up and down the 

71 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

room, or, in utter despair, buried their heads 
in their arms flung out across the table. 

About three o'clock the name "Herr Peters" 
was called. He had been found guilty of mum- 
bling to his comrades that their captain was 
pushing them too hard in an advance. One 
could believe the charge, for, as his name was 
called, he was sullen and unconcerned. "You 
are sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor in 
a fortress. You must go at once." 

He muttered in an undertone something about 
"being luckier in prison in winter than out 
there on the cold, freezing ground, ' ' and, fling- 
ing his knapsack upon his shoulder, lumbered 
off. In how many such hearts is there this sul- 
len revolt against the military system, and how 
much of a factor will it be to reckon with in the 
future? , 

There were four prisoners quite separated 
from the rest of us. It was said that they were 
sentenced to be shot. I am not sure that they 
were ; but we were strictly forbidden any inter- 
course with them. They were the most crest- 
fallen, terror-stricken lot of men that ever I 

72 



ROULETTE AND LIBERTY 

had laid eyes upon, and at four o'clock they 
were led away by a cordon of soldiers. There 
was enough mental suggestion about it to 
plunge the room into a deep silence. It was 
oppressive. 

At last Obels, the reporter, walked over and 
asked me if there were proofs of the immor- 
tality of the soul, excusing himself by saying 
that up to this time he had never had any par- 
ticular time nor reason for reflection on this 
subject. That was the only psychological blun- 
der that he made. However, it at last broke the 
heavy, painful silence, and we speculated to- 
gether, instead of singly, how it might feel to 
have immortal bliss thrust upon us from the 
end of a German musket. 

I related to him my experience of the previous 
week. Some war photographers wanted a, pic- 
ture of a spy shot. I had volunteered to play 
the part of a spy, and, after being blindfolded, 
was led over against a wall, where a Belgian 
squad leveled their rifles at me. I assured 
him that the sensation was by no means ter- 
rible; but he would not be comforted. Death 

73 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

itself he wouldn't mind so much, if he could 
have found it in the open fighting gladly for 
his country; but it seemed a blot on his good 
name to be shot for just snooping around the 
German lines. 

On the whole, after weighing all the pros and 
cons, we decided that our pronounced aversion 
to being shot had purely an altruistic origin. 
It was a wicked, shameful loss to the human 
race. That point was very clear to us. But 
there was the arrant stupidity of the Germans 
to be reckoned with. They have such a dis- 
torted sense of real values. Rummaging 
through my pockets during these reflections, 
I fished up an advertising folder out of a corner 
where I had tucked it when it was presented to 
me by Dr. Morse. The outside read, "How "We 
Lost Our Best Customer." Mechanically I 
opened it, and there, staring back at me from 
big black borders on the inside, were the two 
words, "HE DIED." 

These ruminations upon matters spiritual 
were interrupted by the strains from a brass 
band which went crashing by, while ten thou- 

74 



ROULETTE AND LIBEETY 

sand hobnailed boots of the regiment striking 
the pavements in nnison beat out time like a 
trip-hammer. 

" Perhaps the Germans are leaving Brus- 
sels," whispered a companion; "and wouldn't 
we grow wild or faint or crazy to see those 
guards drop away and we should find ourselves 
free men again ! ' ' 

The passing music had a jubilating effect 
upon our guards, who paraded gayly up and 
down the room. One simple, good-hearted fel- 
low harangued us in a bantering way, pointing 
out our present sorry plight as evidence of the 
sad mistake we had made in not being born in 
Germany. He felt so happy that he took a lit- 
tle collection from us, and in due time returned 
with some bread and chocolate and soda water. 
But even the soda water, as if adjusting itself 
to the spiritlessness of the prisoners, refused to 
effervesce. The music had by contrast seemed 
only to increase the general depression. 

Only one free spirit soared above his sur- 
roundings. He was a young Belgian — Ernest 
de Burgher by name — a kindly light amidst the 

75 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

encircling gloom. He took everything in life 
with a smile. I am sure that if death as a spy 
had been ordered for him at the door, he would 
have met that with the same happy, imperturb- 
able expression. He had quite as much reason 
as I, if not more, for joining our gloom-party. 
He, too, was waiting sentence. For six days 
his wild, untamed spirit had been cabined in 
these walls ; but he had been born a humorist, 
and even in bonds he sought to play the clown. 
He went through contortions, pitched coins 
against himself, and staggered around the 
room with a soda-water bottle at his lips, imitat- 
ing a drunkard. But ours was a tough house 
even for his irrepressible spirit to play to. De- 
spite all his efforts, we sat around like a con- 
vention of corpses, and only once did his comic 
spirit succeed. 

One prisoner sunk down in a comatose condi- 
tion in his chair, as though his last drop of 
strength and life had oozed away. Now de Bur- 
gher was one of those who can resist anything 
but temptation. He stole over and tied the 
man's legs to his chair. Then he got a German 

76 



EOULETTE AND LIBERTY 

soldier to tap the hapless victim on the shoul- 
der. Roused from his stupor to see the soldier 
standing over him like a messenger of doom, the 
poor fellow turned ashen pale. He sprang 
to his feet, but the chair bound to his legs 
tripped him up and he fell sprawling on the 
floor. He apparently regarded the chair as 
some sort of German infernal machine clutching 
him, and he lay there wrestling with his inani- 
mate antagonist as though it were a demon. As 
soon as the victim understood the joke he joined 
in the burst of merriment that ran round the 
room ; but it was of short duration. The gloom 
got us again, despite all that de Burgher could 
do, and finally he succumbed to the prevailing 
atmosphere and gave us up as a bad job. 

He was a diminutive fellow, battered and 
rather the worse for wear. Ever shall I think 
of him not only as the happy-souled, but as the 
great-souled. My introduction into the room 
was at the point of a steel bayonet. With him, 
that served me far better than any gilt-edged 
introduction of high estate. He didn't know 
what crime was charged against me, but he 

77 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

felt that it must have been a sacrifice for Bel- 
gium's sake. The fact that I was persona non 
grata to the Germans was a lien upon his sym- 
pathy, and gave me high rank with him at once. 

He instinctively divined my feelings of fear 
and loneliness, and straightway set out to make 
me his ward, his comrade, and his master. 

Never shall I forget how, during that long 
night in prison, he crawled over and around the 
recumbent forms to where I lay upon the floor 
courting sleep in vain. I was frightened by this 
maneuver, but he smiled and motioned me to 
silence. Reaching up beneath my blanket, he 
unlaced one shoe and then the other. At first I 
really thought that he was going to steal them, 
but the reaction from the day had set in and I 
was too tired and paralyzed to make any pro- 
test. Laying the shoes one side, he remarked, 
"That will ease your feet." Then stripping 
off his coat and rolling it into a bundle, he 
placed it as a pillow beneath my head. 

A great, big hulking American, treated ten- 
derly by this little Belgian, how could I keep 
the tears from my eyes? And as they came 

78 



ROULETTE AND LIBERTY 

welling up — tears of appreciation for the gen- 
erous fineness of his spirit — he took them to be 
tears of grief, brought on by thoughts of home 
and friends and all those haunting memories. 
But he was equal to the occasion. 

In a little vacant space he made a circle of 
cigarettes and small Belgian coins. In the cen- 
ter he placed a small box, and on it laid a ruler. 
' ' This is the roulette wheel at Monte Carlo, and 
you are the rich American, ' ' he whispered, and 
with a snap of the finger he spun the ruler 
round. Whenever it stopped, he presented me 
my prize with sundry winkings and chucklings, 
interrupted by furtive glances towards the door. 

Rouge-et-noir upon a prison floor! To him 
existence was such a game — red life or black 
death, as the fates ordained. His spirit was 
contagious, and I found myself smiling through 
my tears. When he saw his task accomplished, 
gathering in his coins, he crawled away. 

His was a restless spirit. Only once did I see 
him steadfastly quiet. That was the next morn- 
ing, when he sat with his eyes fixed upon an 
opening in the shutter. He insisted upon my 

79 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

taking his seat, and adjusting my angle of vi- 
sion properly. There, framed in a window across 
the forbidden courtyard, was a pretty girl wa- 
tering flowers. She was indeed a distracting 
creature, and de Burgher danced around me 
with unfeigned glee. His previous experience 
with Americans had evidently led him to believe 
that we were all connoisseurs in pretty girls. I 
tried valiantly to uphold our national reputa- 
tion, but my thoughts at the time were much 
more heavenly than even that fair apparition 
framed in the window, and I fear I disappointed 
de Burgher by my lack of enthusiasm. 

My other comrade, Constance Staes, must not 
be forgotten. For some infraction of the new 
military regulations he had been hustled off to 
prison, but he, too, was born for liberty, a free- 
ranging spirit that fetters could never bind. He 
made me see the Belgian soul that would never 
be subservient to German rule. The Germans 
can be overlords in Belgium only when such 
spirits have either emigrated or have been 
totally exterminated. 

To Constance Staes every rule was a chal- 
80 



BOULETTE AND LIBERTY 

lenge. That's the reason he had been put in 
jail. He had trespassed on forbidden way in 
front of the East Station. Here in prison smok- 
ing was forbidden. So Staes, with one eye upon 
the listless guard, would slip beneath a blanket, 
take a pull at his cigarette, and come up again 
as innocent as though he had been saying his 
prayers. I refused the offer of a pull at his 
cigarette, but not the morsel of white bread 
which he drew from behind a picture and shared 
with me. That bread, broken and shared be- 
tween us in that upper room, is to me an eternal 
sacrament. It fed my body hunger then ; never 
shall it cease to feed the hunger of my soul. 

Whenever temptation to play the cynic or 
think meanly of my fellow-man shall come, my 
mind will hark back to those two unpretending 
fellows and bow in reverence before the selfless- 
ness and immensity of the human soul. Need- 
ing bread, they gave it freely away; needing 
strength, they poured themselves out unspar- 
ingly; needing encouragement, they became the 

ministers thereof. For not to me alone, but to 

81 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

all, they played this role of servant, priest, and 
comforter. 

As I write these lines I wonder where their 
spirits are now. Speeded thence, they may have 
already made the next world richer by their 
coming. I do not know that; but I do know 
that they have made my soul infinitely richer 
by their sojourn here; I do not know whether 
they were Catholic or Atheist, but I do know 
how truly the Master of all souls could say to 
these two brave little Belgians: "When I was 
an hungered, ye gave me food; when I was 
thirsty, ye gave me drink; when I was a 
stranger, ye took me in; when I was sick and 
in prison, ye visited me." 

The prison is the real maker of democracy. 
I saw that clearly when, at five o'clock, joy came 
marching into the room. It was an officer who 
was its herald with the simple words, "The 
theater manager is free. ' ' That was a trumpet 
blast annihilating all rank and caste. The man- 
ager, forgetting his office and his dignity, and 
embracing with his right arm a peasant and 
with his left an artisan, danced round the 

82 



ROULETTE AND LIBERTY 

room in a delirium of delight. Twenty men 
were at one time besieging him to grasp his 
hand, and tears, not rhetorically, but actually, 
were streaming down their faces — Russian, 
German, Belgian, and American, high and low, 
countrymen and citymen, smocked and frocked. 
We were fused altogether in the common emo- 
tion of joy and hope. For hope was now ram- 
pant. "If one man can be liberated," ,we 
argued, "why not another? Perhaps the Gen- 
eral was thus giving vent to a temporary vein of 
good humor. ' ' Each man figured that he might 
be the fortunate one upon whom this good luck 
would alight. 

At five-thirty there was much murmuring in 
the corridor, and presently my Ehrenwort lad 
of the previous night came bursting into the 
room, crying, "The American! The Ameri- 
can!" I do not have to describe the thrill of 
joy that those words shot through me; but I 
wish that I might do justice to the beaming face 
of my young officer friend. I am sure that I 
could not have looked more radiant than he did 
when, almost like a mother, he led me forth 

83 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

to greet de Leval and two other assistants from 
the American Ambassador. Now de Leval is 
not built on any sylph-like plan, but he looked 
to me then like an ethereal being from another 
world — the angel who opened the prison door. 

I presumed that I was to walk away with- 
out further ado ; but not so easy. We proceeded 
into another office, where the whole assemblage 
was standing. I have no idea who the high su- 
perior officer was; but he held in his hand a 
blue book which contained a long report of my 
case, with all the documents except the defense 
I had written. Again I was cross-examined, 
and my papers were carefully passed upon one 
by one. 

One they could not or would not overlook, and 
to it throughout all this last examination they 
kept perpetually referring. When I had made 
my thirty- seven-mile journey into Liege on Au- 
gust 20, 1 had secured this paper at Maastricht 
signed by the Dutch and German authorities. 
Over the Dutch seal were the words, "To the 
passing over the boundary into Belgian-Ger- 
many of Mr. Albert Williams there exists on 

84 



EOULETTE AND LIBERTY 

the part of the undersigned no objection. 
Signed, The Commissioner of Police Souten." 
Over the German seal were the words, "At the 
Imperial German Vice-Consulate the foregoing 
signature is hereby attested to be that of 
Souten, the Police Commissioner of Maas- 
tricht. ' ' For this beautifully non-committal af- 
fair I had delivered up six marks. I would have 
cheerfully paid six hundred to disown it now. 

"What explanation is there for his posses- 
sion of that paper?" asked the General sternly. 

De Leval pleaded cleverly, dilating upon the 
natural inquisitiveness and roaming disposition 
of the American race. 

"I know what the Wanderlust is," said the 
General, "but I fail to understand the peculiar 
desire of this man to travel only in dangerous 
and forbidden war zones. 

"In the second place," the General continued, 
"there is no doubt that he has made some re- 
mark to the effect that in the long run Germany 
cannot win. That was overheard by an officer 
in a cafe and is undeniable. The other charges 
we will for the time waive," said the General, 

85 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

drawing himself up with a fine hauteur. "But 
his identifying evidence is very flimsy. Can 
you produce any better V 

Suddenly I bethought me of the gold watch 
in my pocket. It was a presentation from some 
two hundred people of small means in an indus- 
trial district in Boston. Three of the aides 
successively and successfully damaged their 
thumbnails in their eagerness to pry open the 
back cover. That is a source of considerable 
satisfaction to me now ; but it was embarrassing 
in that delicate situation when my fate hung 
almost by a thread, and a trifle could delay my 
release for days. If the General damaged his 
own thumb on it, I feel sure that I would have 
been remanded back to prison. But, luckily, 
the cover sprang open and revealed to the eyes 
the words: "From friends at Maverick." 

De Leva! adroitly turned this to the best 
advantage. It was the last straw. The General 
capitulated. Walking over into the adjoining 
room, he wrote on the blue folder : "Er ist frei 
gelassen." I would give lots for those folders; 
but, though safety was by no means certain, I 

86 



EOULETTE AND LIBERTY 

found I yet had nerve enough to take a ven- 
ture. When I was bidden to pick up my papers 
strewn across the desk, I tried my best to gather 
in some of the other documents. Besides the 
copies of the letter I wrote to the Ambassador 
the only thing I got on my case was this let- 
ter, written by Mr. Whitlock to Baron von de 
Lancken, the official German representative in 
charge of the dealings with the American Em- 
bassy. It has the well-known Whitlock straight- 
from-the-shoulder point and brevity to it. 

Bruxelles, le 29 Septembre, 1914. 
Excellence : 

J'apprends a l'instant que Mr. Williams, citoyen 
Americain residente a l'Hotel Metropole, aurait 
ete arrete lundi par les Autorites allemande. 

Pour le cas ou il n 'aurait pas encore ete mis en 
liberte, je vous saurais gre de me faire connaitre les 
raisons de cette arrestation, et de me donner le moyen 
de communiquer aussitot avee lui, pour pourvoir even- 
tuellement lui fournir toute protection dont it pour- 
rait avoir besoin. 

Veuillez agreer, Excellence, la nouvelle assurance 
de ma haute consideration. 

(S) Brand Whitlock. 
A Son Excellence Monsieur le Baron 
von der Lancken, Bruxelles. 
87 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

Before my final liberation I was escorted into 
the biggest and busiest office of all. 

Here I was given an Erlaubnis to travel by 
military train through. Liege into Germany, and 
from there on out by way of Holland. The 
destination that I had in mind was Ghent, but 
passing through the lines thereto was forbid- 
den. Instead of going directly the thirty miles 
in three hours, I must go around almost a com- 
plete circle, about three hundred miles in three 
days. But nothing could take the edge off my 
joy. A strange exhilaration and a wild desire 
to celebrate possessed me. With such a mood 
I had not hitherto been sympathetic ; on the con- 
trary, I had been much grieved by the sundry 
manifestations of what I deemed a base spirit 
in certain Belgians. One of them had said, 
''Just wait until the Allies' army comes march- 
ing into Brussels ! Oh, then I am going out on 
one glorious drunk ! " In the light of the splen- 
did sacrifices of his fellow-Belgians, this struck 
me as a shocking degradation of the human 
spirit. 

I could not then understand such a view- 



ROULETTE AND LIBERTY 

point. But I could now. In the removal of 
the long abnormal tension one's pent-up spirits 
seek out an equally abnormal channel for ex- 
pression. I, too, felt like an uncaged spirit 
suddenly let loose. I didn't get drunk, but I 
very nearly got arrested again. In my head- 
long ecstasy I was deaf to the warnings of a 
German guard saying, "Passage into this street 
is forbidden." I checked myself just in time, 
and in chastened spirit made my way back to 
the Metropole. 

Three times I was offered the prohibited 
Antwerp papers that had been smuggled into 
the city and once the London Times for twenty- 
five cents. The war price for this is said often 
to have run up to as many dollars. 

An English woman, or at any rate a woman 
with a beautiful English accent, opened a con- 
versation with the remark that she was going 
directly through to Ghent on the following day 
and that she knew how to go right through the 
German lines. That was precisely the way that 
the Germans had just forbidden me to go. But 
this accomplice (if such she was) got no rise 

89 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

out of me. To all intents I was stone-deaf. 
Compared to me, she would have found the 
Sphinx garrulous indeed. She may have been 
as harmless as a dove but, after my escapade, 
I wouldn't have talked to my own mother with- 
out a written permit from the military gov- 
ernor. The Kaiser himself would have found 
it hard work breaking through my cast-iron spy- 
proof armor of formality. I had good reason, 
too, not to let down the bars, for I was trailed 
by the spy-hunters. Not until ten days later 
when I passed over the Holland border did I 
feel release from their vigilant eyes. My key 
at the Metropole was never returned to me and 
I know that my room was searched once, if 
not twice, after my return to the hotel. 

It would be interesting to see how all this tal- 
lies with the official report of my case in the 
archives at Berlin. Perhaps some of these sur- 
mises have shot far wide of the mark. Javert, 
for instance, may not be a direct descendant 
of the ancient Inquisitor who had charge of the 
rack and the thumb screws, as I believed. In 
his own home town he may be a sort of mild- 

90 



ROULETTE AND LIBERTY 

mannered schoolmaster and probably is highly 
astounded as well as gratified to find himself 
cast as the villain in this piece. Perhaps I may 
have been at other times in far greater danger. 
I do not know these things. All I know is that 
this is a true and faithful transcript of the 
feelings and sights that came crowding in upon 
me in that most eventful day and night. 



91 



Part II 
ON FOOT WITH THE GERMAN AEMY 



CHAPTEE V 

THE GEAY HORDES OUT OF THE NORTH 

THE- outbreak of the Great War found me 
in Europe as a general tourist, and not 
in the capacity of war-correspondent. Hith- 
erto I had essayed a much less romantic role in 
life, belonging rather to the crowd of uplifters 
who conduct the drab and dreary battle with 
the slums. The futility of most of these schemes 
for badgering the poor makes one feel at times 
that these battles are shams and unavailing. 
This is depressing. It is thrilling, then, sudden- 
ly to acquire the glamorous title of war- 
correspondent, and to have before one the pros- 
pect of real and actual battles. 

Commissioned thus and desiring to live up 
to the code and requirement of the office, I nat- 
urally opined that war-correspondents rushed 
immediately into the thick of the fight. Later 

95 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

I discovered what a mistake that was. Only very 
young and green ones do so. The seasoned 
correspondent is inclined to view the whole af- 
fair more dispassionately and with a larger 
perspective. But being of the verdant variety, 
I naturally figured that if the Germans were 
smashing down through Belgium onto Liege 
that that was where I should be. By entering 
gingerly through the back door of Holland, I 
planned to join them in their march down the 
Meuse River. 

To The Hague came descriptions of the 
hordes pressing down out of the north through 
the fire-swept, blood-drenched plain of north- 
ern Belgium. This could be seen from the 
Dutch frontier at Maastricht. But passage 
thereto was interdicted by the military authori- 
ties. Ambassador Van Dyke's efforts were un- 
availing. Possessing a red-card, I enlisted the 
help of Troelstra, the socialist leader of the 
Netherlands. 

He had just returned from an audience with 
the Queen. The government, seeking to rally 
all classes to face a grave crisis, was pay- 

96 



GRAY HORDES OUT OF THE NORTH 

ing court to the labor leaders. Accordingly, 
the war department, at Troelstra's behest, re- 
ceived me with a handsome show of deference. 
I was escorted from one gold-laced officer to an- 
other. Each one smiled kindly, listened atten- 
tively and regretted exceedingly that the grant- 
ing of the desired permission lay outside his 
own particular jurisdiction. They were polite, 
ingratiating, obsequious even, but quite unani- 
mous. At the end I came out by the same door 
wherein I went — minus a permission. 

Up till now my progress through the fringes 
of the war zone had been in defiance of all or- 
ders and advice. Having failed here officially, 
I took the matter in my own hands. Finding 
a seat in a military train, I stuck steadfastly 
by it so long as our general direction was south. 
At Eindhoven hunger compelled me to alight. 
As I was stepping up to the hotel-bar, I felt a 
tap on my shoulder and some one in excellent 
English said: 

"You are under suspicion, sir. Follow me. 
Don't look around. Don't get excited. If you 
are all right you don't need to get excited; if 

97 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

you aren't it won't do yon any good to get ex- 
cited." 

With this running fire of comment he led me 
into a side-room where a half -hour's examina- 
tion satisfied him of my good intent. Without 
further untoward incident I came to Maastricht 
in Limbourg. Limbourg is the name of the 
narrow strip of Dutch territory which runs 
down between Germany and Belgium. At one 
place this tongue of land is but a few miles 
wide. If the Germans could have marched their 
troops directly across this they might have been 
spared the two weeks ' slaughter at the forts of 
Liege and Paris, in all probability, would have 
fallen before them. It was a great temptation 
to the Germans. That's the reason the Dutch 
troops had been massed here by the tens of 
thousands — to prevent Germany succumbing 
to that temptation. 

At our approach to the great Meuse bridge an 
officer shouted into each compartment : 

" Every window closed. All cigars and pipes 
extinguished." 

"Why?" we asked. 

98 



GRAY HORDES OUT OF THE NORTH 

"The bridge is mined with explosives and a 
stray spark might set them off," a soldier in- 
formed us. 

The first German attempt to set foot on the 
bridge would be the signal for sending the great 
structure crashing skywards. 

The end of the run was Maastricht, now be- 
come a town of crucial interest. It was like a 
city besieged. Barricades of barbed wire and 
paving stones ripped from street ran every- 
where. Iron rails and ties blocked the exits 
and the small cannon disconcertingly thrust 
their nozzles down upon one out of the win- 
dows. 

I lingered here long enough to secure a car- 
riage and with it made quick time across the 
harvest fields. We were soon up on the little 
hill back of Mesch. The sun was sinking and 
for the first time war, in all its terrible spec- 
tacular splendor, smote me hard. From the hill 
at my feet there stretched away a great plain 
filled with a dense mass of German soldiery. 
One could scarcely believe that there were men 
there so well did their gray-green coats blend 

99 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

with the landscape. One would think that they 
were indeed a part of it, could he not feel the 
atmosphere vibrant with the mass personality 
of the myriad warriors tramping down the crops 
of the peasants. In the rear the commissariat 
vans and artillery still came lumbering up, 
while in the very front pranced the horses 
of the dreaded Uhlans, who looked with con- 
tempt, I imagined, on the Dutch soldiers as they 
stood there with the warning that here was 
Netherlands soil. 

In the fighting German and Belgian troops 
had already been pushed up against this line. 
Here they were greeted with the challenge: 
"Lay down your arms. This is the neutral soil 
of Holland." Thus many were interned until 
the end of the war. 

As even darkened into night, the endless 
plain became stippled over with points of flame 
from countless campfires. There were beauty 
and- mystery in this vast menace sweeping the 
soul of the onlooker now with horror, and now 
with admiration. There was a terrible back- 
ground to the spectacle — glowing red and lumi- 

100 




Uhlans Occupying the Belgian Countryside and — 




The Peasants Who Fled Before Them 



GRAY HORDES OUT OF THE NORTH 

nous. It was made of the still blazing towns 
of Mouland and Vise, burned to the ground by 
order of the invaders. The fire had been set 
as a warning to the inhabitants round about. 
They were taking the warning and hastening 
by the thousands across the border into Hol- 
land, their only haven of safety. 

When we drove down from the hill into Eys- 
den, we were in the midst of these peasants, 
fleeing before the red wrath rolling up into 
the sky. They came shambling in with a few 
possessions on which they had hurriedly laid 
their hands, singly or in families, a pitiful pro- 
cession of the disinherited. 

Some of the men were moaning as they 
marched along, but most of them were taking 
it with the tragic oxlike resignation of the 
peasant, stupefied more than terrified, puzzled 
why these soldiers were coming down into their 
quiet little villages to fight out their quarrels. 
The women were crying out to Mary and all 
the saints. Indeed all the little crosses along 
the waysides or in the walls were decked with 
flowers in gratitude for what had been spared 

101 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

them. In most cases it was little more than 
their lives, their brood of children, and their 
dogs that followed on. 

My driver finally landed me in a shack on the 
outskirts of Eysden, which boasted the name 
of a hotel. It had the worst bed I ever slept 
in, and the only window was a hole in the roof. 

I wandered out among the unfortunates, now 
herded in halls and schools and packed in the 
homes of the friendly villagers. They were 
full of the weirdest tales of loot and murder. 
And while there were no tears in their eyes 
there was tragedy in their voices. 

"It would be worth while getting over to the 
sources and verifying the truth of these 
stories," I remarked. 

"A sheer impossibility, and only a fool would 
want to go, ' ' was one laconic commentary. 

I kept up my plaint and was overheard by 
Souten, head of the Limbourg police. 

"American, aren't you?" he interjected. 
"Well, I have done more work here in the last 
five days than I did in the five years that I 
lived in New York. Had the best time in my 

102 



Facsimile of the Author's Permit to Enter Belgium-Germany 



POLITIE !l A A ST RIGHT 
Tegen doo.riattng na'ar. de zyde van Belgie" Duitschland 



beetaat by ondergoteelcenda-e^en bezwaar.- 

De Gamiaiaaarls\van Politla, 









^VWVYV 






"frr^jg^teheriden Unterschntt de* Herra -<c%2 

Qebuhr pos, 20. Maastricht, den /<f /fcf /£&/&/* 

M 6.- * f 3,60 . ---^O^KAISEgi^HIJ^KdNSU^ 



Note. — A translation of this appears in the Chapter 
"Roulette and Liberty" 



GRAY HORDES OUT OF THE NORTH 

life there. If you want to go sight- seeing in 
Belgium, take this paper and get it counter- 
signed at the German consulate. It's the only 
one I've given out to-day." 

I hurried off to the consul who, in return for 
six marks, duly impressed it with the Ger- 
man seal. Later on I would gladly have given 
six hundred marks to disown it. 

"Of course you understand that this is sim- 
ply a paper issued by the civil authorities, ' ' said 
the consul, as he passed it out. "Use it at your 
own risk. If you go ahead and get shot by 
the military authorities, don't come back and 
blame us." 

I promised that I wouldn't and was off again 
to my hotel. 

As darkness deepened, with two Hollanders 
come to view the havoc of war, I sat on the 
stoop of our little inn. A great rumbling of 
cannon came from the direction of Tongres. A 
sentry shot rang out on the frontier just across 
the river which flowed not ten rods away. This 
was the Meuse, which ran red with the blood of 
the combatants, and from which the natives 

103 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

drew the floating corpses to the shore. Now 
its gentle lapping on the stones mingled with 
the subdued murmur of our talk. In such sur- 
roundings my new friends regaled me with sto- 
ries of pillage and murder which the refugees 
had been bringing in from across the border. 
All this produced a distinct depreciation in the 
value that I had hitherto attached to my permit 
to go visiting across that border. Souten's 
declarations of friendship for America had been 
most voluble. It began dawning on me that 
his apparently generous and impulsive action 
might bear a different interpretation than un- 
adulterated kindness. 

At this juncture, I remember, a great light 
flared suddenly up. It was one of the fans of a 
wind-mill fired by the Germans. In the fore- 
ground we could see the soldiers standing like 
so many gray wolves silhouetted against the 
red flames. In that light it did seem that mo- 
tives other than pure affection might have 
prompted the Police Commissioner's action. 
The hectic sleep of the night was broken by the 

104 



GRAY HORDES OUT OF THE NORTH 

endless clatter of the hoofs of the German cav- 
alry pushing south. 

My courage rose, however, with the rising 
sun. In the morning I climbed to the lookout 
on the hill. The hosts had vanished. A tram- 
pled, smoldering fire-blackened land lay before 
me. But there was the lure of the unknown. I 
walked down to where the great Netherlands 
flag proclaimed neutral soil. The worried Dutch 
pickets honored the signature of Souten and 
with one step I was over the border into Bel- 
gium, now under German jurisdiction. The 
helmeted soldiers across the way were a dis- 
tinct disappointment. They looked neither fierce 
nor fiery. In fact, they greeted me with a smile. 
They were a bit puzzled by my paper, but the 
seal seemed echt-Deutsch and they pronounced 
it "gut, sehr gut." I explained that I wished 
to go forwards to Liege. 

"Was it possible?" 

For answer they shrugged their shoulders. 

"Was it dangerous?" 

"Not in the least," they assured me. 
105 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

The Germans were right. It was not danger- 
ous — that is, for the Germans. By repeatedly 
proclaiming the everlasting friendship of Ger- 
many and America, and passing out some choco- 
late, I made good friends on the home base. 
They charged me only not to return after sun- 
down, giving point to their advice by relating 
how, on the previous night, they had shot down 
a peasant woman and her two children who, 
under the cloak of darkness, sought to scurry 
past the sentinels. They told this with a genuine 
note of grief in their voices. So, with a hearty 
hand-shake and wishes for the best of luck, 
they waved adieu to me as I went swinging out 
on the highroad to Liege. 



106 



CHAPTEE VI 

IN THE BLACK WAKE OF THE WAR 

A HALF-MILE and I came for the first time 
actually face to face with the wastage of 
war. There was what once was Mouland, the lit- 
tle village I had seen burning the night before. 
The houses stood roofless and open to the sky, 
like so many tombstones over a departed peo- 
ple. The whitewashed outer walls were all shin- 
ing in the morning sun. Inside they were 
charred black, or blazing yet with coals from 
the fire still slowly burning its way through 
wood and plaster. Here and there a house had 
escaped the torch. 

By some miracle in the smashed window of 
one of these houses a bright red geranium blos- 
somed. It seemed to cry for water, but I dared 
not turn aside, for fear of a bullet from a lurk- 
ing sentry. In another a sewing-machine of 

107 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

American make testified to the thrift and pro- 
gressiveness of one household. In the last house 
as I left the village a rocking-horse with its 
head stuck through the open door smiled its 
wooden smile, as if at any rate it could keep 
good cheer even though the roofs might fall. 

My road now wound into the open country; 
and I was heartily glad of it, for the hedges 
and the houses at Mouland provided fine coverts 
for prowling German foragers or for Belgians 
looking for revenge. Dead cows and horses 
and dogs with their sides ripped open by bullets 
lay along the wayside. The roads were deep 
printed with the hoofs of the cavalry. The 
grain-fields were flattened out. Nine little 
crosses marked the place where nine soldiers 
of the Kaiser fell. 

This smiling countryside, teeming with one 
of the densest populations in the world, had 
been stripped clean of every inhabitant. Along 
the wasted way not the sign of a civilian, or 
for that matter even a soldier, was to be seen. 
I was glad even of the presence of a pig which, 
with her litter, was enjoying the unwonted 

108 



IN THE BLACK WAKE OF THE WAR 

pleasure of rooting out her morning meal in a 
rich flower-garden. She did not reciprocate, 
however, with any such fellow feeling. Perhaps 
of late she had seen enough of the doings of 
the genus homo. Surveying me as though I had 
been the author of all this destruction, she gave 
a frightened snort and plunged into a nearby 
thicket. 

I craved companionship of any living crea- 
ture to break the spell of death and silence. 
I was destined to have the wish gratified in 
abundance. Fifteen, minutes brought me to the 
outskirts of Vise, and there, coming over the 
hills and wending their way down to the river, 
were two long lines of German soldiers escort- 
ing wagons of the artillery and the commis- 
sariat. They came slowly and noiselessly trudg- 
ing on and I was upon them as they crossed the 
main road before I realized it. The men were 
covered with dust; so were the horses. The 
wagons were in their somber paint of gray. 
There was something ominous and threatening 
in the long sullen line which wound down over 
the hill. The soldiers were evidently tired with 

109 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEBMAN EAGLE 

the tedious uneventful march, and the drivers 
were goaded to irritability by the difficulty of 
the descent. Could I have retreated I would 
have done so with joy and would never have 
stopped until my feet were set on Holland 
soil. 

But I dared not do it. As the train came to 
a stop, I started bravely across the road. A 
soldier, dropping his gun from his shoulder, 
cried : 

"Halt!" 

"Is this the way to Vise?" I asked. 

"Perhaps it is," he replied, "but what do 
you want in Vise?" 

As he spoke, he kept edging up, pointing his 
bayonet directly at me. A bayonet will never 
look quite the same to me again. Total retreat, 
as I remarked, was out of the question. My 
inward anatomy, however, did the next best 
thing. As the bayonet point came pressing for- 
ward, my stomach retired backward. I could 
feel it distinctly making efforts to crawl behind 
my spine. At my first word of German his face 
relaxed. Ditto my stomach. 

110 



IN THE BLACK WAKE OF THE WAR 

"You are an American," he said. "Well, 
good for that. I don't know what we would have 
done were you a Belgian. Our orders are to 
suffer no Belgian in this whole district." 

Then he began an apologia which I heard re- 
peated identically again and again, as if it were 
learned by rote : ' ' The Germans had peacefully 
entered the land ; boiling hot water was show- 
ered on them from upper stories ; they were shot 
at from houses and hedges ; many soldiers had 
thus been killed; the wells had been poisoned. 
Such acts of treachery had necessarily brought 
reprisals, etc., etc." It was the defense so regu- 
larly served up to neutrals that we learned in 
time to reproduce it almost word for word our- 
selves. 

We all rise to the glorification of suffering 
little Belgium. Whatever brief we may hold 
for her though, we ought not to picture even 
her peasant people as a mild, meek and inof- 
fensive lot. That isn't the sort of stuff out of 
which her dogged and continuing resistance 
was wrought. That isn't the mettle which for 

111 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

two weeks stopped up the German tide before 
the Liege forts, giving the allies two weeks to 
mobilize, and all they had asked the Belgians 
for was two or three days of grace. But before 
the German avalanche hurled itself on Liege 
it was this peasant population which bore the 
first brunt of the battle. 

A mistake in the branching roads brought 
this home to me. I turned off in the direction 
of Verviers and was puzzled to see the road 
on either side strewn with tree-trunks, their 
sprawling limbs still green with leaves. It was 
along this highway that the invaders first en- 
tered Belgium. The peasants, turning their 
axes loose on the poplars and the royal elms 
that lined the road, had filled it with a tangle 
of interlocking limbs. 

The Imperial army arrived with cannon which 
could smash a fort to pieces as though it were 
made of blue china, but of what avail were 
these against such yielding obstructions I Mad- 
dened that these shambling creatures of the soil 
should delay the military promenade through 
this little land, officers rushed out and held their 

112 



IN THE BLACK WAKE OF THE WAR 

pistols at the heads of the offenders, threaten- 
ing to blow their brains out if they did not 
speedily clear the way. Many a peasant did 
not live to see his house go up in flames — his 
dwelling dyed by his own blood was now turned 
into a funeral pyre. These were the first sacri- 
ficial offerings of Belgium on the altar of her 
independence. 

I now entered Vise, or rather what once had 
been the little city of Vise. It was almost com- 
pletely annihilated and its three thousand in- 
habitants scattered. Through the mass of smok- 
ing ruins I pushed, with the paving-stones still 
hot beneath my feet. Quite unawares I ran full 
tilt into a group of soldiers, looking as ugly 
and dirty as the ruins amongst which they were 
prowling. 

The green-gray field-uniform is a remarkable 
piece of obliterative coloration. I had seen it 
blend with grass and trees, but in this instance 
it fitted in so well with the stones and debris 
they were poking over that I was right amongst 
them without warning. They straightened up 
with a sudden start and scowled at me. Hol- 

113 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEKMAN EAGLE 

landers and Belgians had faithfully assured me 
that such marauding bands would shoot at 
sight. Here was an excellent test-case. Three 
hundred marks, a gold watch and a lot of food 
which crammed my pockets would be their booty. 

I took the initiative with the bland inquiry, 
"What are you hunting for, corpses?" 

"No," they responded, pointing to their 
mouths and stomachs, ' ' awful hungry. Hunting 
something to eat." 

I bade a mental farewell to my food-supplies 
as I emptied out my pockets before these rav- 
agers. I expected everything to be grabbed 
with a summary demand for more. From these 
despoilers of a countryside I was ready for 
any sort of a manifestation — any, except the 
one that I received. With one accord they re- 
fused to take any of my provisions. I recovered 
from my surprise sufficiently to understand that 
they were thanking me for my good will while 
they were constantly reiterating: 

"It is your food and you will need every bit 
of it." 

In the name of camaraderie I persuaded each 
114 




Hungry Germans Foraging in Vise and- 







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Thirsty Ones Snatching a Drink on the Drive to Paris 



IN THE BLACK WAKE OF THE WAR 

to take a piece of bread and chocolate. They 
received this offering with profound gratitude. 
With much cautioning and many solemn Auf 
Wiedersehens bestowed upon me, I was off 
again. 

Below Vise an entirely new vista opened to 
me. Tens of thousands of soldiers were march- 
ing over the pontoon bridges already flung 
across the river. Perhaps five hundred more 
were engaged in building a steel bridge which 
seemed to be a hurried but remarkable piece of 
engineering. It was replacing the old structure 
which had been dynamited by the Belgians, and 
which now lay a tangled mass of wreckage in 
the river. 

For the next eight miles to Jupilles the coun- 
try was quite as much alive as the first four 
miles were dead. It was swarming with the 
military. Through all the gaps in the hills above 
the Eiver Meuse the German army came pour- 
ing down like an enormous tidal wave — a tidal 
wave with a purpose, viz : to fling itself against 
the Allies arranged in battle line at Namur, and 
with the overwhelming mass of numbers to 

115 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

smash that line to bits and sweep on resistlessly 
into Paris. I thought of the Blue and Red wall 
of French and English down there awaiting 
this Gray-Green tide of Teutons. 

By the hundreds of thousands they were com- 
ing; patrols of cavalry clattering along, the 
hoof-beats of the chargers coming with regular 
cadence on the hard roads ; silent moving riders 
mounted on bicycles, their guns strapped on 
their backs; armored automobiles rumbling 
slowly on, but taking the occasional spaces 
which opened in the road with a hollow roaring 
sound and at a terrific pace ; individual horse- 
men galloping up and down the road with their 
messages, and the massed regiments of dust- 
begrimed men marching endlessly by. 

I was glad to have the spell which had been 
woven on me broken by strains of music from 
a wayside cafe, or rather the remains of a cafe, 
for the windows had been demolished and 
wreckage was strewn about the door, but the 
piano within had survived the ravages. Though 
it was sadly out of tune, the officer, seated on a 
beer keg, was evoking a noise from its battered 

116 



IN THE BLACK WAKE OF THE WAE 

keys, and to its accompaniment some soldiers 
were bawling lustily : 

"Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles!" 

The only other mnsic that echoed up along 
those river cliffs came from a full-throated Sax- 
on regiment. 

Evidently the Belgians from Vise to Liege 
had not roused the ire of the invaders as furi- 
ously as had the natives on the other side of 
Vise. They had as a whole established more 
or less friendly relations with the alien hosts. 

On the other side of Vise nothing had availed 
to stay the wrath of the Germans. Flags of 
truce made of sheets and pillow-cases and white 
petticoats were hung out on poles and broom 
handles ; but many of these houses before which 
they hung had been burned to the ground as 
had the others. 

One Belgian had sought for his own benefit 
to conciliate the Germans, and as the Kaiser's 
troops at the turn of the road came upon his 
house, there was the Kaiser's emblem with the 
double-headed eagle raised to greet them. The 
man had nailed it high up in an apple tree, that 

117 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

they might not mistake his attitude of truckling 
disloyalty to his own country, hoping so to save 
his home. But let it be said to the credit of 
the Germans, that they had shown their con- 
tempt for this treachery by razing this house 
to the ground, and the poor fellow has lost his 
earthly treasures along with his soul. 

I now came upon some houses that were un- 
damaged and showed signs of life therein. Be- 
low Argenteau there was a vine-covered cottage 
before which stood a peasant woman guarding 
her little domain. Her weapon was not a rifle 
but several buckets of water and a pleasant 
smile. I ventured to ask how she used the water. 
She had no time to explain, for at that very 
moment a column of soldiers came slowly plod- 
ding down the dusty road. She motioned me 
away as though she would free herself from 
whatever stigma my presence might incur. A 
worried look clouded her face, as though she 
were saying to herself : "I know that we have 
been spared so far by all the brigands which 
have gone by, but perhaps here at last is the 
band that has been appointed to wipe us out. ' ' 

118 



IN THE BLACK WAKE OF THE WAR 

This water, then, was a peace-offering, a plea 
for mercy. 

As soon as the soldiers looked her way she 
put a smile on her face, but it ill concealed her 
anxiety. She pointed invitingly to her pails. At 
the sight of the water a thirsty soldier here and 
there would break from the ranks, rush to the 
pails, take the proffered cup, and hastily swal- 
low down the cooling draught. Then returning 
the cup to the woman, he would rush back again 
to his place in the ranks. Perhaps a dozen men 
removed their helmets, and, extracting a sponge 
from the inside, made signs to the woman to 
pour water on it ; then, replacing the sponge in 
the helmet, marched on refreshed and rejoicing. 

A mounted officer, spying this little oasis, 
drew rein and gave the order to halt. The 
troopers, very wearied by the long forced march, 
flung themselves down upon the grass while the 
officer's horse thrust his nose deep into the pail 
and greedily sucked the water up. More buckets 
were being continually brought out. Some of 
them must surely have been confiscated from 
her neighbors who had fled. The officer, dis- 

119 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

mounting, sought to hold converse with his 
hostess, but even with many signs it proved a 
failure. They both laughed heartily together, 
though her mirth I thought a bit forced. 

I do not remember witnessing any finer epi- 
sode in all the war than that enacted in this re- 
gion where the sky was red with flames from 
the neighbors' houses, and the lintels red with 
blood from their veins. A frail little soul with 
only spiritual weapons, she fought for her 
hearth against a venging host in arms ; facing 
these rough war-stained men, she forced her 
trembling body to outward calm and gracious- 
ness. Her nerve was not unappreciated. Not 
one soldier returned his cup without a word of 
thanks and a look of admiration. 

Nor did this pluck go unrewarded. Three 
months later, passing again through this region 
as a prisoner, I glimpsed the little cottage still 
standing in its plot by the flowing river. I want 
to visit it again after the war. It will always 
be to me a shrine of the spirit 's splendid daring. 



120 



CHAPTER VII 

A DUELIST FKOM MAEBUKG 

A SQUAD of soldiers stretched out on a 
bank beckoned me to join them ; I did so 
and at once they begged for news. They were 
not of an order of super-intelligence, and in- 
formed me that it was the French they were to 
fight at Liege. Unaware that England had en- 
tered the lists against Germany, "Belgium" 
was only a word to them. I took it upon myself 
to clear up their minds on these points. An 
officer overheard and plainly showed his dis- 
approval of such missionary activity, yet he 
could not conceal his own curiosity. I sought 
to appease him by volunteering some informa- 
tion. 

"Japan," I blandly announced, "is about to 
join the foes of Germany." As the truth, that 
was unassailable; but as diplomacy it was a 
wretched fluke. 

121 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

''You're a fool!" he exploded. "What are 
you talking about? Japan is one of our best 
friends, almost as good as America. Those two 
nations will fight for us — not against us. You're 
verruckt." 

That was a severe stricture but in the cir- 
cumstances I thought best to overlook the reflec- 
tion upon my mentality. One of the soldiers 
passed some witticism, evidently at my ex- 
pense; taking advantage of the outburst of 
laughter, I made off down the road. They did 
not offer to detain me. The officer probably 
reasoned that my being there was guarantee 
enough of my right to be there, taking it for 
granted that the regular sentries on the road 
had passed upon my credentials. However, I 
made a very strong resolution hereafter to be 
less zealous in my proclamation of the truth, 
to hold my tongue and keep walking. 

In the midst of my reflections I was startled 
by a whistle, and, looking back, saw in the dis- 
tance a puff of steam on what I supposed was 
the wholly abandoned railway, but there, sure 
enough, was a train rattling along at a good 

122 



A DUELIST FROM MARBURG 

rate. I could make out soldiers with guns sit- 
ting upon the tender, and presumed that they 
were with these instruments directing the op- 
erations of some Belgian engineer and fireman. 
In a moment more I saw I was mistaken, for 
at the throttle was a uniformed soldier, and an- 
other comrade in his gray-green costume was 
shoveling coal into the furnace. One of the 
guards, seeing me plodding on, smilingly beck- 
oned to me to jump aboard. When I took the 
cue and made a move in that direction he winked 
his eye and significantly tapped upon the barrel 
of his gun. The train was loaded with iron rails 
and timbers, and I speculated as to their use, 
but farther down the line I saw hundreds of 
men unloading these, making a great noise as 
they flung them down the river bank to the wa- 
ter 's edge. They were destined for a big pon- 
toon bridge which these men were, with thou- 
sands of soldiers, throwing across the stream. 
Ceaselessly the din and clangor of hammerings 
rang out over the river. 

My way now wound through what was, to all 

purposes, one German camp, strung for miles 

123 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

along the Meuse. The soldiers were busy with 
domestic duties. Everywhere there was the 
cheer and rhythm of well-ordered industry in 
the open air. In one place thousands of loaves 
of black bread were being shifted from wagon 
to wagon. In another they were piling a yard 
high with mountains of grain. The air was full 
of the drone of a great mill, humming away 
at full speed, while the Belgian fields were yield- 
ing up their golden harvests to the invaders. 
Apples in great clusters hung down around the 
necks of horses tethered in the orchards. "With 
their keepers they were enjoying a respite from 
their hard fatiguing exertions. 

Here and there among the groves, or along 
the wayside, was a contrivance that looked like 
a tiny engine ; smoke curled out of its chimney 
and coals blazed brightly in the grate. They 
were the kitchen-wagons, each making in it- 
self a complete, compact cooking apparatus. 
Some had immense caldrons with a spoon as 
large as a spade. In these the stews, put up in 
dry form and guaranteed to keep for twenty 
years, were being heated. A savory smell per- 

124 



A DUELIST FROM MARBURG 

meated the air and at the sound of the bugle 
the men clustered about, each looking happy 
as he received his dish rilled with steaming ra- 
tions. 

Through this scene the native Belgians moved 
freely in and out. Tables had been dragged out 
into the yard, and around them officers were 
sitting eating, drinking, and chatting with the 
peasant women who were serving them and 
with whom they had set up an entente cordiale. 
Indeed, these Belgians seemed to be rather en- 
joying this interruption in the monotony of 
their lives, and a few were making the most 
of the great adventure. In one case I could 
not help believing that a certain strikingly- 
pretty, self-possessed girl was not altogether 
averse to a war which could thus bring to her 
side the attentions of such a handsome and gal- 
lant set of officers as were gathered round her. 
At any rate, she was equal to the occasion, and 
over her little court, which rang with laughter, 
she presided with a certain rustic dignity and 
ease. 

The ordinary soldier could make himself un- 
125 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

derstood only with motions and sundry grant- 
ing^, and consequently had to content himself 
with smoking in the sun or sleeping in the shade. 
Everywhere was the atmosphere of physical 
relaxation after the long journey. So far did 
my tension wear off, that I even forgot the 
resolution to hold my tongue. Two officers lean- 
ing back in their chairs at a table by the way- 
side surveyed me intently as I came along. 
Rather than wait to be challenged, I thought it 
best to turn aside and ask them my usual ques- 
tion, "How does one get to Liege!" 

One of them answered somewhat stiffly, add- 
ing, "And where did you learn your German?" 

"I was in a German university a few 
months," I replied. 

"Which one?" the officer asked. 

1 ' Marburg, ' ' I replied. 

"Ah!" he said, this time with a smile; "that 
was mine. I studied philology there. ' ' 

We talked together of the fine, rich life there, 
and I spoke of the students' duels I had wit- 
nessed a few miles out. 

"Ah!" he said, uncovering his head and 
126 



A DUELIST FROM MARBURG 

pointing to the scars across his scalp; "that's 
where I got these. Perhaps I will get some 
deeper ones down in this country," he added 
with a smile. 

Ofttimes in the early morning hours I had 
trudged out to a students' inn on the outskirts 
of Marburg. As many times I had heard the 
solemn announcement of the umpire warning 
all assembled to disperse as the place might be 
raided by the police and all imprisoned. That 
was a mere formality. No one left. The umpire 
forthwith cried "Los," there was a flash of 
swords in the air as each duelist sought, and 
sometimes succeeded, in cutting his opponent's 
face into a Hamburg steak. It was a sanguinary 
affair and undoubtedly connived at by the of- 
ficials. When I had asked what was the point 
of it all, I was told that it developed Mut and 
Enschlossenheit — a fine contempt of pain and 
blood. That dueling was not without its con- 
tribution to the general program of German 
preparedness. Only now the blood-letting was 
gone at on a colossal scale. 

"Yes, that's where I received these cuts," 
127 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

this young officer said, ' ' and if I do not get some 
too deep down here I'll write to you after the 
war, ' ' he added with another smile. As I gave 
him my address, I asked for his. 

"It's against all the rules," he answered. 
"It can't be done. But you shall hear from me, 
I assure you," he said with a hearty hand- 
shake. 

Only once all the way into Liege did I feel 
any suspicion directed towards me. That was 
when I presented my paper to the next guard, a 
morose-looking individual. He looked at it very 
puzzled, and put several questions to me. His 
last one was, 

1 ' Where is your home ? ' ' 

"I come from Boston, Massachusetts," I re- 
plied. 

Encouraged with my success with the last of- 
ficers, I ventured to ask him where he came 
from. 

Looking me straight in the eyes, he replied 
very pointedly, "Ich komme aus DeutscMand." 

Good form among invading armies, I found, 
precluded the guest making inquiry into any 

128 



A DUELIST FEOM MAEBUEG 

one's antecedents. I made a second resolution 
to keep my own counsel, as I hurried down the 
road. 

There was no release from his searching 1 eyes 
until a turn in the highway put an intervening 
obstacle between myself and him. But this re- 
lief was short-lived, for no sooner had I rounded 
the bend than a cry of ' ' Halt ! ' ' shot fear into 
me. I turned to see a man on a wheel waving 
wildly at me. I thought it was a summons back 
to my inquisitor, and the end of my journey. 
Instead, it was my officer from Marburg, who 
dismounted, took two letters from his pocket, 
and asked me if I would have the kindness to 
deliver them to the Feld Post if I got through to 
Liege. He said that seemed like a God-given 
opportunity to lift the load off the hearts of his 
mother and his sweetheart back home. Gladly I 
took them, with his caution not to drop them 
into an ordinary letter-box in Liege, but to take 
them to the Feld Post or give them to an officer. 
I went on my way rejoicing that I could add 
these letters to my credentials. I now passed 
down the long street of Jupilles, which was plas- 

129 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

tered with notices from the German authorities 
guaranteeing observance of the rights of the 
citizens of Jupilles, but threatening to visit any 
overt acts against the soldiers "with the most 
terrible reprisals. " 

I arrived on the outskirts of Liege with the 
expectation of seeing a sorry-looking battered 
city, as the reports which had drifted to the 
outer world had made it; but considering that 
it had been the center around which the storm 
of battle had raged for over two weeks, it 
showed outwardly but little damage. The chief 
marks of war were in the shattered windows; 
the great pontoon bridge of barges, which re- 
placed the dynamited structure by the Rue Leo- 
pold, and hundreds of stores and public build- 
ings, flying the white flag with the Red Cross on 
it. The walls, too, were fairly white with 
placards posted by order of the German burgo- 
master Klyper. It was an anachronism to find 
along the trail of the forty-two centimeter guns 
warnings of death to persons harboring courier 
pigeons. 

Another bill which was just being posted was 
130 



A DUELIST FROM MARBURG 

the announcement of the war-tax of 50,000,000 
francs imposed on the city to pay for the "ad- 
ministration of civil affairs." That was the 
first of those war-levies which leeched the life 
blood out of Belgium. 

The American consul, Heingartner, threw up 
his hands in astonishment as I presented my- 
self. No one else had come through since the 
beginning of hostilities. He begged for news- 
papers but, unfortunately, I had thrown my lot 
away, not realizing how completely Liege had 
been cut off from the outer world. He related 
the incidents of that first night entry of Ger- 
man troops into Liege. The clatter of machine 
gun bullets sweeping by the consulate had 
scarcely ceased when the sounds of gun-butts 
battering on the doors accompanied by hoarse 
shouts of " Auf Steigen" (get up) reverberated 
through the street. As the doors unbolted and 
swung back, officers peremptorily demanded 
quarters for their troops, receiving with con- 
tempt the protests of Heingartner that they 
were violating precincts under protection of the 
American flag. 

131 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

On the following day, however, a whole- 
hearted apology was tendered along with an 
invitation to witness the first firing of the big 
guns. 

''Put yonr fingers in yonr ears, stand on 
yonr toes, and open yonr month," the officer 
said. There was a terrific concussion, a black 
speck up in the heavens, and a ton of metal 
dropped down out of the blue, smashing one of 
the cupolas of the forts to pieces. That one 
shot annihilated 260 men. I shuddered as we 
all do. But it should not be for the sufferings 
of the killed. For they did not suffer at all. 
They were wiped out as by the snapping of a 
finger. 

The taking of those 260 bodies out of the 
world, then, was a painless process. But not so 
the bringing of these bodies into the world. 
That cost an infinite sum of pain and anguish. 
To bring these bodies into being 260 mothers 
went down into the very Valley of the Shadow 
of Death. And now in a flash all this life had 
been sent crashing into eternity. "Women may 
not bear arms, but they bear men, and so fur- 

132 



A DUELIST FROM MARBURG 

nish the first munitions of war. ' ' Thus are they 
deeply and directly concerned in the affairs of 
the state. 

The consul with his wife and daughter gave 
me dinner along with a cordial welcome. At 
first he was most appreciative of my exploits. 
Then it seemed to dawn on him that possibly 
other motives than sheer love of adventure 
might have spurred me on. The harboring of 
a possible spy was too large a risk to run in the 
uncertain temper of the Germans. In that light 
I took on the aspects of a liability. 

The clerks of the two hotels to whom I ap- 
plied assumed a like attitude. In fact every 
one with whom I attempted to hold converse 
became coldly aloof. Holding the best of in- 
tents, I was treated like a pariah. The only 
one whom I could get a raise from was a book- 
seller who spoke English. His wrath against 
the spoilers overcame his discretion, and he 
launched out into a bitter tirade against them. 
I reminded him that, as civilians, his fellow- 
countrymen had undoubtedly been sniping on 
the German troops. That was too much. 

133 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

' * What would you do if a thief or a murderer 
entered your house!" he exploded. "No mat- 
ter if he had announced his coming, you would 
shoot him, wouldn't you?" 

Realizing that he had confided altogether too 
much to a casual passerby, he suddenly sub- 
sided. The only other comment I could drag 
out of him was that of a German officer who had 
told him that "one Belgian could fight as good 
as four Germans." My request for a lodging- 
place met with the same evasion from him as 
from the others. 



134 



CHAPTEE VIII 

THIRTY-SEVEN MILES IN A DAY 

""■""AEATH if you try to cross the line after 
jL-J nightfall." Thus my soldier friends 
picketing the Holland-Belgium frontier had 
warned me in the morning. That rendezvous 
with death was not a roseate prospect; but 
there was something just as omnious about the 
situation in Liege. To cover the sixteen miles 
back to the Dutch border before dark was a big 
task to tackle with blistered feet. I knew the 
sentries along the way returning, but I knew not 
the pitfalls for me if I remained in Liege. This 
drove me to a prompt decision and straight- 
way I made for the bridge. 

It was no prophetically favorable sight that 
greeted me at the outset. A Belgian, a mere 
stripling of twenty or thereabouts, had just 
been shot, and the soldiers, rolling him on a 

135 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

stretcher, were carrying him off. I made so bold 
as to approach a sentry and ask: 

"What has he been doing? " 

For an answer the sentry pointed to a nearby 
notice. In four languages it announced that 
any one caught near a telegraph pole or wire 
in any manner that looked suspicious to the 
authorities would be summarily dealt with. 
They were carrying him away, poor lad, and the 
crowd passed on in heedless fashion, as though 
already grown accustomed to death. 

When the troops at the front are taking lives 
by the thousands, those guarding the lines at 
the rear catch the contagion of killing. Know- 
ing that this was the temper of some of the 
sentries, I speeded along at a rapid rate, daring 
to make one cut across a field, and so came to 
Jupilles without challenge. Stopping to get a 
drink there, I realized what a protest my feet 
were making against the strain to which I was 
putting them. Luckily, a peasant's vegetable 
cart was passing, and, jumping on, I was con- 
gratulating myself on the relief, when after a 
few hundred yards the cart turned up a lane, 

136 



THIRTY-SEVEN MILES IN A DAY 

leaving me on the road again with one franc less 
in my pocket. 

There were so few soldiers along this stretch 
that I drove myself along at a furious pace, 
slowing up only when I sighted a soldier. I was 
very hot, and felt my face blazing red as the 
natives gazed after me stalking so fiercely past 
them. But the great automobiles plunging by 
flung up such clouds of dust that my face was 
being continually covered by this gray powder. 
What I most feared was lest, growing dizzy, I 
should lose my head and make incoherent an- 
swers. 

Faint with the heat I dragged myself into a 
little wayside place. Everything wore a dingy 
air of poverty except the gracious keeper of the 
inn. I pointed to my throat. She understood 
at once my signs of thirst and quickly produced 
water and coffee, of which I drank until I was 
ashamed. 

"How much?" I asked. 

She shook her head negatively. I pushed a 
franc or two across the table. 

"No," she said smilingly but with resolution. 
137 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

"I can't take it. You need it on your journey. 
We are all just friends together now." 

So my dust and distress had their compensa- 
tions. They had brought me inclusion in that 
deeper Belgian community of sorrow. 

It was apparent that the Germans were go- 
ing to make this rich region a great center for 
their operations and a permanent base of sup- 
ply. There must have been ten thousand clean- 
looking cattle on the opposite bank of the river ; 
they were raising a great noise as the soldiers 
drove their wagons among them, throwing down 
the hay and grain. Otherwise, the army had set- 
tled down from the hustling activities of the 
morning, and the guards had been posted for 
the oncoming evening. I knew now that I was 
progressing at a good pace because near Wan- 
dre I noticed a peasant 's wagon ahead, and 
soon overtook it. It was carrying eight or nine 
Belgian farm-hands, and the horse was making 
fair time under constant pressure from the 
driver. 

I did not wish to add an extra burden to the 
overloaded animal, but it was no time for the 

138 



THIRTY-SEVEN MILES IN A DAY 

exercise of sentiment. So I held up a two-franc 
piece to the driver. He looked at the coin, then 
he looked at the horse, and then, picking out the 
meekest and the most inoffensive of his free pas- 
sengers, he bade him get off and motioned me 
to take the vacated seat at my right as a first- 
class paying passenger. Two francs was the 
fare, and he seemed highly gratified with the 
sum, little realizing that he could just as well 
have had two hundred francs for that seat. We 
stopped once more to hitch on a small wood- 
cart, and with that bumping behind us, we 
trailed along fearfully slowly. Gladly would 
I have offered a generous bounty to have him 
urge his horse along, but I feared to excite sus- 
picion by too lavish an outlay of money. So I 
sat tight and let my feet dangle off the side, glad 
of the relief, but feeling them slowly swelling 
beneath me. 

I was saving my head as well as my feet, for 
the perpetual matching of one's wits in en- 
counters with the guards was continually nerve- 
frazzling. But now as the cart joggled past, 
the guard made a casual survey of us all, taking 

139 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

it for granted that I was one of the local in- 
habitants. For this respite from constant in- 
quisition I was indebted to the dust, grime and 
sweat that covered me. It blurred out all dis- 
tinction between myself and the peasants, form- 
ing a perfect protective coloration. 

To slide past so many guards so easily was 
a net gain indeed. However, the end of such 
easy passing came at the edge of Charrate, 
where the driver turned into his yard, and I was 
dumped down into an encampment of soldiers. 
Acting on the militarists' dictum that the best 
defensive is a strong offensive I pushed my 
way boldly into the midst of a group gathered 
round a pump and made signs that I desired 
a drink. At first they did not understand, or, 
thinking that I was a native Belgian, they 
were rather taken aback by such impertinence ; 
but one soldier handed me his cup and another 
pumped it full. I drank it, and, thanking them, 
started off. This calm assurance gained me 
passage past the guard, who had stood by 
watching the procedure. 

In the next six hundred yards I was brought 
140 



THIRTY-SEVEN MILES IN A DAY 

to a standstill by a sudden "Halt!" At one 
of the posts some soldiers were ringed around 
a prisoner garbed in the long black regulation 
cassock of a priest. Though he wore a white 
handkerchief around his arm as a badge of a 
peaceful attitude, he was held as a spy. His 
hands and his eyes were twitching nervously. 
He seemed to be glad to welcome the addition 
of my company into the ranks of the suspects, 
but he was doomed to disappointment, for I 
was passed along. The next guard took me to 
his superior officer directly. But the superior 
officer was the incarnation of good humor and 
he was more interested in a little repast that 
was being made ready for him than in entering 
into the questions involved in my case. 

"Search him for weapons," he said casually, 
while he himself made a few perfunctory passes 
over my pockets. No weapons being found, he 
said, "Let him go. "We've done damage here 
enough." 

These interruptions were getting to be dis- 
tressingly frequent. I had journeyed but a few 
hundred yards farther when a surly fellow 

141 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEBMAN EAGLE 

sprang out from behind a wagon and in a rau- 
cous voice bade me "Stand by." He bad an 
evil glint in his eye, and was ready to go out of 
his way hunting trouble. Totally dissatisfied 
with any answer I could make, he kept roaring 
louder and louder. There was no doubt that 
he was venting his spleen upon an unprotected 
and humble civilian, and that he was thoroughly 
enjoying seeing me cringe under his bulldozing. 
It flashed upon me that he might be a self- 
appointed guardian of the way. So when he be- 
gan to wax still more arrogant, I simply said, 
"Take me to your superior officer." 

He softened down like a child, and, standing 
aside, motioned me along. 

I would put nothing past a bully of that 
stripe. He was capable of committing any kind 
of an atrocity. And his sort undoubtedly did. 
But what else can one expect from a conscript 
army, which, as it puts every man on its roster, 
must necessarily contain the worst as well as 
the best? Draft 1,000 men out of any com- 
munity in any country and along with the decent 
citizens there will be a certain number of cow- 

142 



THIRTY-SEVEN MILES IN A DAY 

ards, braggarts and brutes. When occasion of- 
fers they will rob, rape and murder. To such a 
vicious strain this fellow belonged. 

The soldier whom next I encountered is real- 
ly typical of the Gemutlichkeit of the men who, 
on the 20th of August, were encamped along 
the Meuse River. I was moving along fast now 
under the cover of a hedge which paralleled the 
road when a voice called out * ' Halt ! " In a step 
or two I came to a stop. A large fellow climbed 
over the hedge, and, coming on the road, fell, 
or rather stumbled over himself, into the ditch. 
I was afraid he was drunk, and that this tumble 
would add vexation to his spirits; but he was 
only tired and over-weighted, carrying a big 
knapsack and a gun, a number of articles gir- 
dled around his waist, along with too much 
avoirdupois. It seems that even in this con- 
quered territory the Germans never relaxed 
their vigilance. Fully a thousand men stood 
guarding the pontoon bridge, and this man, who 
had gone out foraging and was returning with 
a bottle of milk, carried his full fighting equip- 
ment with him, as did all the others. I gave him 

143 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

a hand and pulled him to his feet, offering to 
help carry something, as he was breathing 
heavily ; but he refused my aid. As we walked 
along together I gave him my last stick of choco- 
late, and, being assured by my demeanor that 
I was a friend, he showed a real kindly, fatherly 
interest in me. 

"A bunch of robbers, that's what these Bel- 
gians are, ' ' he asserted stoutly. ' ' They charged 
me a mark for a quart of milk. ' ' 

I put my question of the morning to him: 
' ' Is it dangerous traveling along here so late ! ' ' 

His answer was anything but reassuring. 
"Yes, it is very dangerous." 

Then he explained that one of his comrades 
had been shot by a Belgian from the bluffs above 
that very afternoon and that the men were all 
very angry. All the Belgians had taken to cover, 
for the road was totally cleared of pedestrians 
from this place on to Mouland. 

"Well, what am I to do?" I asked. 

"Go straight ahead. Swerve neither to the 
right nor left. Be sure you have no weapons, 
and stop at once when the guard cries 'Halt!' 

144 



THIRTY-SEVEN MILES IN A DAY 

and you will get through all right. But, above 
all, be sure to stand stock still immediately at 
the challenge. Above all — that," he insisted. 

"But did I not stop still when you cried 
' Halt ! ' a minute ago ? " I asked. 

"No," he said; "you took two or three steps 
before you came to a perfect stop. See, this is 
the way to do it." He started off briskly, and 
as I cried "Halt!" came to a standstill with 
marvelous and sudden precision for a man of 
his weight. 

"Do it that way &nd cry out, ' Beady, here ! ' 
and it will be all right. ' ' 

I would give a great deal for a vignette of 
that ponderous fellow acting as drillmaster to 
this stray American. The intensity of the situa- 
tion rapidly ripened his interest into an affec- 
tion. I was fretting to get away, but the ameni- 
ties demanded a more formal leave-taking. At 
last, however, I broke away, bearing with me his 
paternal benediction. Far ahead a company of 
soldiers was forming into line. Just as I 
reached the place they came to attention, and 
at a gesture from the captain I walked like a 

145 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEBMAN EAGLE 

royal personage down past the whole line, feel- 
ing hundreds of eyes critically playing upon me. 
I suspect that the captain had a sense of humor 
and was enjoying the discomfiture he knew I 
must feel. 

Estimating my advance by the signboards, 
where distances were marked in kilometers, it 
appeared that I was getting on with wretched 
slowness, considering the efforts I was making. 
At this rate, I knew I should never reach the 
Holland frontier by nightfall, and from the 
warnings I had received I dreaded to attempt 
crossing after sundown. Sleeping in the fields 
when the whole country was infested by soldiers 
was out of the question, so I turned to the first 
open cottage of a peasant and asked him to take 
me in for the night. He shook his head em- 
phatically, and gave me to understand it would 
be all his life were worth if he did so. So I ral- 
lied my energies for one last effort, and plunged 
wildly ahead. 

The breeze was blowing refreshingly up the 
river, the road was clear, and soon I was re- 
warded by seeing the smoke still curling up 

146 



THIRTY-SEVEN MILES IN A DAY 

from the ruins of Vise. I looked at my watch, 
which pointed to the time for sunset, and yet 
there was the sun, curiously enough, some dis- 
tance up from the horizon. The fact of the mat- 
ter is that I had reset my watch at Liege, and 
clocks there had all been changed to German 
time. With a tremendous sense of relief I dis- 
covered that I had a full hour more than I had 
figured on. 

There was ample time now to cover the re- 
maining distance, and so I rested a moment be- 
fore what appeared to be a deserted house. 
Slowly the shutters were pushed back and a 
sweet-faced old lady timorously thrust her head 
out of an upper window. She apparently had 
been hiding away terror-stricken, and there was 
something pathetic in the half -trusting way she 
risked her fate even now. In a low voice she 
put some question in the local patois to me. I 
could not understand what she was asking, but 
concluded that she was seeking comfort and 
assurance. So I sought to convey by much ges- 
turing and benevolent smiling that all was quiet 
and safe along the Meuse. She may have con- 

147 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

eluded that I was some harmless, roaming idiot 
who could not answer a plain question; but it 
was the best I could do, and I walked on to Vise 
with the fine feeling of having played the role 
of comforter. 

At Vise I was heartened by two dogs who 
jumped wildly and joyously around me. I gath- 
ered courage enough here to swerve to the right, 
and from the window of a still burning road- 
side cafe extracted three wine-glasses as sou- 
venirs of the trip. 

Presently I was in Mouland, whose few for- 
lorn walls grouped about the village church 
made a pathetic picture as they glowed lumi- 
nously in the setting sun. A flock of doves were 
cooing in the blackened ruins. Now I was on the 
home-stretch ; and, that there might be no mis- 
take with my early morning comrades, I cried 
out in German, "Here comes a friend!" With 
broad smiles on their faces, they were wait- 
ing there to receive me. 

They made a not unpicturesque group gath- 
ered around their camp-fire. One was plucking 
a chicken, another making the straw beds for 

148 



THIRTY-SEVEN MILES IN A DAY 

the night. A third was laboriously at work writ- 
ing a post-card. I ventured the information 
that I had made over fifty kilometers that day. 
They punctured my pride somewhat by stating 
that that was often the regular stint for Ger- 
man soldiers. But, pointing to their own well- 
made hobnailed boots, they added, "Never in 
thin rubber soles like yours." After empty- 
ing my pockets of eatables and promising to 
deliver the post-card, I passed once more un- 
der the great Dutch banner into neutral terri- 
tory. 

My three Holland friends were there with an 
automobile, and, greeting me with a hearty 
"Gute Knabe!" whisked me off to Maastricht. 
For the next three days I did all my writing in 
bed, nursing a couple of bandaged feet. I 
wouldn't have missed that trip for ten thousand 
dollars. I wouldn't go through it again for a 
hundred thousand. 



149 



Pakt III 

WITH THE WAR PHOTOGRAPHERS IN 
BELGIUM 



CHAPTER IX 

HOW I WAS SHOT AS A GERMAN SPY 

IN the last days of September, the Belgians 
moving in and through Ghent in their rain- 
bow-colored costumes, gave to the city a dis- 
tinctively holiday touch. The clatter of cavalry 
hoofs and the throb of racing motors rose above 
the voices of the mobs that surged along the 
streets. 

Service was normal in the cafes. To the ac- 
companiment of music and clinking glasses the 
dress-suited waiter served me a five-course 
lunch for two francs. It was uncanny to see 
this blaze of life while the city sat under the 
shadow of a grave disaster. At any moment the 
gray German tide might break out of Brussels 
and pour its turbid flood of soldiers through 
these very streets. Even now a Taube hovered 
in the sky, and from the skirmish-line an occa- 

153 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

siona! ambulance rumbled in with its crimsoned 
load. 

I chanced into Gambrinus' cafe and was lost 
in the babbling sea of French and Flemish. 
Above the melee of sounds, however, I caught 
a gladdening bit of English. Turning about, I 
espied a little group of men whose plain clothes 
stood out in contrast to the colored uniforms of 
officers and soldiers crowded into the cafe. 
Wearied of my efforts at conversing in a for- 
eign tongue, I went over and said: 
i 'Do you really speak English?" 
"Well, rather!" answered the one who 
seemed to act as leader of the group. "We are 
the only ones now and it will be scarcer still 
around here in a few days." 
"Why?" I asked. 

"Because Ghent will be in German hands." 
This brought an emphatic denial from one of 
his confreres who insisted that the Germans had 
already reached the end of their rope. A cer- 
tain correspondent, joining in the argument, 
came in for a deal of banter for taking the war 
de luxe in a good hotel far from the front. 

154 



HOW I WAS SHOT AS A GERMAN SPY 

"What do you know about the war?" they 
twitted him. "You've pumped all your best 
stories out of the refugees ten miles from the 
front, after priming them with a glass of beer. ' ' 

They were a group of young war-photog- 
raphers to whom danger was a magnet. Though 
none of them had yet reached the age of thirty, 
they had seen service in all the stirring events 
of Europe and even around the globe. Where 
the clouds lowered and the seas tossed, there 
they nocked. Like stormy petrels they rushed 
to the center of the swirling world. That was 
their element. A free-lance, a representative of 
the Northcliffe press, and two movie-men com- 
prised this little group and made an island of 
English amidst the general babel. 

Like most men who have seen much of the 
world, they had ceased to be cynics. When I 
came to them out of the rain, carrying no other 
introduction than a dripping overcoat, they 
welcomed me into their company and whiled 
away the evening with tales of the Balkan 
wars. 

They were in high spirits over their exploits 
155 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

of the previous day, when the Germans, with- 
drawing from Melle on the outskirts of the city, 
had left a long row of cottages still burning. 
As the enemy troops pulled out the further end 
of the street, the movie men came in at the other 
and caught the pictures of the still blazing 
houses. We went down to view them on the 
screen. To the gentle throbbing of drums and 
piano, the citizens of Ghent viewed the unique 
spectacle of their own suburbs going up in 
smoke. 

At the end of the show they invited me to fill 
out their automobile on the morrow. Nearly 
every other motor had been commandeered by 
the authorities for the ''Service Militaire" and 
bore on the front the letters ' ' S. M. ' ? Our car 
was by no means in the blue-ribbon class. It 
had a hesitating disposition and the authorities, 
regarding it as more of a liability than an as- 
set, had passed it over. 

But the correspondents counted it a great 
stroke of fortune to have any car at all; and, 
that they might continue to have it, they kept it 
at night carefully locked in a room in the hotel. 

156 



HOW I WAS SHOT AS A GEEMAN SPY 

They had their chauffeur under like supervision. 
He was one of their kind, and with the cunning 
of a diplomat obtained the permit to buy petrol, 
most precious of all treasures in the field of 
war. Indeed, gasoline, along with courage and 
discipline, completed the trinity of success in 
the military mind. 

With the British flag flying at the front, we 
sped away next morning on the road to Ter- 
monde. At Melle we came upon the blazing 
cottages we had seen pictured the night before. 
Here we encountered a roving band of Belgian 
soldiers who were in a free and careless mood 
and evinced a ready willingness to put them- 
selves at our disposal. Under the command of 
the photographers, they charged across the 
fields with fixed bayonets, wriggled up through 
the grass, or, standing behind the trenches, 
blazed away with their guns at an imaginary 
enemy. They did some good acting, grim and 
serious as death. All except one. 

This youth couldn't suppress his sense of 
humor. He could not, or would not, keep from 
laughing, even when he was supposed to be 

157 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

blowing the head off a Boche. He was properly 
disciplined and put out of the game, and we 
went on with our maneuvers to the accompani- 
ment of the clicking cameras until the photog- 
raphers had gathered in a fine lot of realistic 
fighting-line pictures. 

One of the photographers sat stolidly in the 
automobile smoking his cigarette while the oth- 
ers were reaping their harvest. 

"Why don't you take these too?" I asked. 

"Oh," he replied, "I've been sending in so 
much of that stuff that I just got a telegram 
from my paper saying, 'Pension off that Bel- 
gian regiment which is doing stunts in the 
trenches.' " 

While his little army rested from their ma- 
neuvers the Director-in-Chief turned to me and 
said: 

"Wouldn't you like to have a photograph of 
yourself in these war-surroundings, just to take 
home as a souvenir?" 

That appealed to me. After rejecting some 
commonplace suggestions, he exclaimed: "I 
have it. Shot as a German Spy. There's the 

158 



HOW I WAS SHOT AS A GEEMAN SPY 

wall to stand up against ; and we'll pick a crack 
firing-squad out of these Belgians. A little bit 
of all right, eh?" 

I acquiesced in the plan and was led over to 
the wall while a movie-man whipped out a hand- 
kerchief and tied it over my eyes. The director 
then took the firing squad in hand. He had but 
recently witnessed the execution of a spy where 
he had almost burst with a desire to photograph 
the scene. It had been excruciating torture to 
restrain himself. But the experience had made 
him feel conversant with the etiquette of shoot- 
ing a spy, as it was being done amongst the 
very best firing-squads. He made it now stand 
him in good stead. 

"Aim right across the bandage," the director 
coached them. I could hear one of the soldiers 
laughing excitedly as he was warming up to 
the rehearsal. It occurred to me that I was re- 
posing a lot of confidence in a stray band of 
soldiers. Some one of those Belgians, gifted 
with a lively imagination, might get carried 
away with the suggestion and act as if I really 
were a German spy. 

159 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

"Shoot the blooming blighter in the eye," 
said one movie man playfully. 

"Bally good idea!" exclaimed the other one 
approvingly, while one eager actor realistically 
clicked his rifle-hammer. That was altogether 
too much. I tore the bandage from my eyes, 
exclaiming : 

"It would be a bally good idea to take those 
cartridges out first." Some fellow might think 
his cartridge was blank or try to fire wild, just 
as a joke in order to see me jump. I wasn't 
going to take any risk and flatly refused to play 
my part until the cartridges were ejected. Even 
when the bandage was readjusted "Didn't- 
know-it-was-loaded ' ' stories still were haunting 
me. In a moment, however, it was over and I 
was promised my picture within a fortnight. 

A week later I picked up the London Daily 
Mirror from a news-stand. It had the caption : 



Sold 



iers 



Shoot 



gELGIAN 

a German Spy Caught 



at Tc 



Picture 



160 



HOW I WAS SHOT AS A GERMAN SPY 

I opened up the paper and what was my sur- 
prise to see a big spread picture of myself, 
lined up against that row of Melle cottages and 
being shot for the delectation of the British pub- 
lic. There is the same long raincoat that runs 
as a motif through all the other pictures. Un- 
derneath it were the words: 

"The Belgians have a short, sharp method 
of dealing with the Kaiser's rat-hole spies. 
This one was caught near Termonde and, after 
being blindfolded, the firing-squad soon put an 
end to his inglorious career." 

One would not call it fame exactly, even 
though I played the star-role. But it is a source 
of some satisfaction to have helped a royal lot 
of fellows to a first-class scoop. As the "au- 
thentic spy-picture of the war," it has had a 
broadcast circulation. I have seen it in publica- 
tions ranging all the way from The Police Ga- 
zette to "Collier's Photographic History of the 
European War." In a university club I once 
chanced upon a group gathered around this 
identical picture. They were discussing the 
psychology of this "poor devil" in the moments 

161 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

before he was shot. It was a further source of 
satisfaction to step in and arbitrarily contra- 
dict all their conclusions and, having shown 
them how totally mistaken they were, proceed 
to tell them exactly how the victim felt. This 
high-handed manner nettled one fellow terri- 
bly: 

"Not so arbitrary, my friend!" he said. 
"You haven't any right to be so devilish cock- 
sure. ' ' 

"Haven't I?" I replied. "Who has any bet- 
ter right 1 I happen to be that identical man ! ' ' 

But that little episode has been of real value 
to me. It is said that if one goes through the 
motions he gets the emotions. I believe that I 
have an inkling of how a man feels when he 
momentarily expects a volley of cold lead to 
turn his skull into a sieve. 

That was a very timely picture. It filled a 
real demand. For spies were at that time loom- 
ing distressingly large in the public mind. The 
deeds they had done, or were about to do, cast 
a cold fear over men by day and haunted them 
by night. They were in the Allies ' councils, in- 

162 



HOW I WAS SHOT AS A GEKMAN SPY 

festing the army, planning destruction to the 
navy. Any wild tale got credence, adding its 
bit to the general paralysis, and producing a 
vociferous demand that "something be done." 
The people were assured that all culprits were 
being duly sentenced and shot. But there was 
no proof of it. There were no pictures thereof 
extant. And that is what the public wanted. 

"Give the public what it wants," was the 
motto of this enterprising newspaper man. 
Herewith he supplied tangible evidence on 
which they could feast their eyes and soothe 
their nerves. 

As to the ethics of these pictures, they are 
"true" in that they are faithful to reality. In 
this case the photographer acted up to his pro- 
fessional knowledge and staged the pictures as 
he had actually seen the spy shot. They must 
find their justification on the same basis as fic- 
tion, which is ' ' the art of falsifying facts for the 
sake of truth." And who would begrudge them 
the securing of a few pictures with comparative 
ease? 

Most of the pictures which the public casually 
163 



IN THE CLAWS OP THE GERMAN EAGLE 

gazes on have been secured at a price — and a 
large one, too. The names of these men who go 
to the front with cameras, rather than with rifles 
or pens, are generally unknown. They are 
rarely found beneath the pictures, yet where 
would be our vivid impression of courage in 
daring and of skill in doing, of cunning strategy 
upon the field of battle, of wounded soldiers 
sacrificing for their comrades, if we had no pic- 
tures? A few pictures are faked, but behind 
most pictures there is another tale of daring and 
of strategy, and that is the tale concerning the 
man who took it. That very day thrice these 
same men risked their lives. 

The apparatus loaded in the car, we were off 
again. Past a few barricades of paving-stones 
and wagons, past the burned houses which 
marked the place where the Germans had come 
within five miles of Ghent, we encountered some 
uniformed Belgians who looked quite as dismal 
and dispirited as the fog which hung above the 
fields. They were the famous Guarde Civique 
of Belgium. Our Union Jack, flapping in the 
wind, was very likely quite the most thrilling 

164 



HOW I WAS SHOT AS A GERMAN SPY 

spectacle they had seen in a week, and they 
hailed it with a cheer and a cry of "Vive VAn- 
gleterre!" (Long live England!) The Guarde 
Civique had a rather inglorious time of it. 
Wearisomely in their wearisome-looking uni- 
form, they stood for hours on their guns or 
marched and counter-marched in dreary pa- 
trolling, often doomed not even to scent the bat- 
tle from afar off. 

Whenever we were called to a halt for the ex- 
amination of pur passports, these men crowded 
around and begged for newspapers. We held 
up our stock, and they would clamor for the 
ones with pictures. The English text was un- 
intelligible to most of them, but the pictures 
they could understand, and they bore them away 
to enjoy the sight of other soldiers fighting, even 
if they themselves were denied that excitement. 
Our question to them was always the same, 
1 ' Where are the Germans ? ' ' 

Out of the conflicting reports it was hard to 
tell whether the Germans were heading this way 
or not. That they were expected was shown by 
the sign-posts whose directions had just been 

165 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

obliterated by fresh paint — a rather futile oper- 
ation, because the Germans had better maps and 
plans of the region than the Belgians them- 
selves, maps which showed every by-path, well 
and barn. The chauffeur's brother had been 
shot in his car by the Germans but a week be- 
fore, and he didn't relish the idea of thus flaunt- 
ing the enemy's flag along a road where some 
German scouting party might appear at any mo- 
ment. The Union Jack had done good service 
in getting us easy passage so far, but the driver 
was not keen for going further with it. 

It was proposed to turn the car around and 
back it down the road, as had been done the pre- 
vious day. Thus the car would be headed in 
the home direction, and at sight of the dreaded 
uniform we could make a quick leap for safety. 
At this juncture, however, I produced a small 
Stars and Stripes, which the chauffeur hailed 
with delight, and we continued our journey now 
under the aegis of a neutral flag. 

It might have secured temporary safety, but 
only temporary; for if the Englishmen with 
only British passports had fallen into the hands 

166 



HOW I WAS SHOT AS A GERMAN SPY 

of the Germans, like their unfortunate kinsmen 
who did venture too far into the war zone, they, 
too, would have had a chance to cool their ardor 
in some detention-camp of Germany. This 
cheerful prospect was in the mind of these men, 
for, when we espied coming around a distant 
corner two gray-looking men on horseback, 
they turned white as the chauffeur cried, 
" Uhlans!" 

It is a question whether the car or our hearts 
came to a dead standstill first. Our shock was 
unnecessary. They proved to be Belgians, and 
assured us that the road was clear all the way 
to Termonde; and, except for an occasional 
peasant tilling his fields, the country-side was 
quite deserted until at Grembergen we came 
upon an unending procession of refugees 
streaming down the road. They were all com- 
ing out of Termonde. Termonde, after being 
taken and retaken, bombarded and burned, was 
for the moment neutral territory. A Belgian 
commandant had allowed the refugees that 
morning to return and gather what they might 
from among the ruins. 

167 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

In the early morning, then, they had gone 
into the city, and now at high noon they were 
pouring out, a great procession of the dispos- 
sessed. They came tracking their way to where 
— God only knows. All they knew was that in 
their hearts was set the fear of Uhlans, and in 
the sky the smoke and flames of their burning 
homesteads. They came laden with their lares 
and penates, — mainly dogs, feather beds, and 
crayon portraits of their ancestors. 

Women came carrying on their heads packs 
which looked like their entire household para- 
phernalia. The men were more unassuming, 
and, as a rule, carried a package considerably 
lighter and comporting more with their superior 
masculine dignity. I recall one little woman 
in particular. She was bearing a burden heavy 
enough to send a strong American athlete stag- 
gering down to the ground, while at her side 
majestically marched her faithful knight, bear- 
ing a bird-cage, and there wasn't any bird in 
it, either. 

Nothing could be more mirth-provoking than 
that sight ; yet, strangely enough, the most tear- 

168 



HOW I WAS SHOT AS A GEBMAN SPY 

compelling memory of the war is connected with 
another bird-cage. Two children rummaging 
through their ruined home dug it out of the 
debris. In it was their little pet canary. While 
fire and smoke rolled through the house it had 
beat its wings against the bars in vain. Its 
prison had become its tomb. Its feathers were 
but slightly singed, yet it was dead with that 
pathetic finality which attaches itself to only a 
dead bird — its silver songs and flutterings, once 
the delight of the children, now stilled forever. 

The photographers had long looked for what 
they termed a first-class sob-picture. Here it 
was par excellent. The larger child stood strok- 
ing the feathers of her pet and murmuring over 
and over "Poor Annette," "Poor Annette!" 
Then the smaller one snuggling the limp little 
thing against her neck wept inconsolably. 

Instead of seizing their opportunity, the 
movie man was clearing his throat while the 
free lance was busy on what he said was a cin- 
der in his eye. Yet this very man had brought 
back from the Balkan War of 1907 a prime col- 
lection of horrors; corpses thrown into the 

169 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

death-cart with arms and legs sticking out like 
so much stubble; the death-cart creeping away 
with its ghastly load ; and the dumping together 
of bodies of men and beasts into a pit to be 
eaten by the lime. This man who had gone 
through all this with good nerve was now 
touched to tears by two children crying over 
their pet canary. There are some things that 
are too much for the heart of even a war-pho- 
tographer. 

To give the whole exodus the right tragic set- 
ting, one is tempted to write that tears were 
streaming down all the faces of the refugees, 
but on the contrary, indeed, most of them car- 
ried a smile and a pipe, and trudged stolidly 
along, much as though bound for a fair. Some 
of our pictures show laughing refugees. That 
may not be fair, for man is so constituted that 
the muscles of his face automatically relax to 
the click of the camera. But as I recall that 
pitiful procession, there was in it very little out- 
ward expression of sorrow. 

Undoubtedly there was sadness enough in all 
their hearts, but people in Europe have learned 

170 



HOW I WAS SHOT AS A GERMAN SPY 

to live on short rations ; they rarely indulge in 
luxuries like weeping, but bear the most un- 
wonted afflictions as though they were the ordi- 
nary fortunes of life. War has set a new stand- 
ard for grief. So these victims passed along 
the road, but not before the record of their pass- 
ing was etched for ever on our moving-picture 
films. The coming generation will not have to 
reconstruct the scene from the colored accounts 
of the journalist, but with their own eyes they 
can see the hegira of the homeless as it really 
was. 

The resignation of the peasant in the face of 
the great calamity was a continual source of 
amazement to us. Zola in "he Debacle" puts 
into his picture of the battle of Sedan an old 
peasant plowing on his farm in the valley. 
While shells go screaming overhead he placidly 
drives his old white horse through the accus- 
tomed furrows. One naturally presumed that 
this was a dramatic touch of the great novelist. 
But similar incidents we saw in this Great War 
over and over again. 

We were with Consul van Hee one morning 
171 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEBMAN EAGLE 

early before the clinging veil of sleep had lifted 
from our spirits or the mists from the low-lying 
meadows. Without warning our car shot 
through a bank of fog into a spectacle of medie- 
val splendor — a veritable Field of the Cloth of 
Gold, spread out on the green plains of Flan- 
ders. 

A thousand horses strained at their bridles 
while their thousand riders in great fur busbies 
loomed up almost like giants. A thousand pen- 
nons stirred in the morning air while the sun 
burning through the mists glinted on the tips of 
as many lances. The crack Belgian cavalry di- 
visions had been gathered here just behind the 
firing-lines in readiness for a sortie; the Lan- 
cers in their cherry and green and the Guides in 
their blue and gold making a blaze of color. 

It was as if in a trance we had been carried 
back to a tourney of ancient chivalry — this was 
before privations and the new drab uniforms 
had taken all glamour out of the war. As we 
gazed upon the glittering spectacle the order 
from the commander came to us : 

"Back, back out of danger!" 
172 



HOW I WAS SHOT AS A GEEMAN SPY 

"Forward!" was the charge to the Lancers. 

The field-guns rumbled into line and each 
rider unslung his carbine. Putting spurs to the 
horses, the whole line rode past saluting our 
Stars and Stripes with a "Vive L'Amerique." 
Bringing up the rear two cassocked priests 
served to give this pageantry a touch of 
prophetic grimness. 

And yet as the cavalcade swept across the 
fields thrilling us with its color and its action, 
the nearby peasants went on spreading fertil- 
izer quite as calm and unconcerned as we were 
exhilarated. 

"Stupid," "Clods," "Souls of oxen," we 
commented, yet a protagonist of the peasant 
might point out that it was perhaps as noble 
and certainly quite as useful to be held by a 
passion for the soil as to be caught by the 
glamour of men riding out to slaughter. And 
Zola puts this in the mind of his peasants. 

"Why should I lose a day? Soldiers must 
fight, but folks must live. It is for me to keep 
the corn growing." 

Deep down into the soil the peasant strikes 
173 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

his roots. Urban people can never comprehend 
when these roots are cut away how hopelessly 
lost and adrift this European peasant in par- 
ticular becomes. Wicked as the Great War has 
seemed to us in its bearing down upon these in- 
nocent folks, yet we can never understand the 
cruelty that they have suffered in being up- 
rooted from the land and sent forth to become 
beggars and wanderers upon the highroads of 
the world. 



174 



CHAPTER X 



THE LITTLE BELGIAN WHO SAID, "YOU BETCHA 



it- 



IN the fighting around Termonde the bridge 
over the Scheldt had been three times blown 
up and three times reconstructed. Wires now 
led to explosives under the bridge on the Ter- 
monde side, and on the side held by the Belgians 
they led to a table in the room of the command- 
ing officer. In this table was an electric button. 
By the button stood an officer. The entrance 
of the Germans on that bridge was the signal 
for the officer to push that button, and thus to 
blow both bridge and Germans into bits. 

But the Belgians were taking no chances. If 
by any mishap that electric connection should 
fail them, it would devolve upon the artillery 
lined upon the bank to rake the bridge with 
shrapnel. A roofed-over trench ran along the 
river like a levee and bristled with machine guns 

175 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

whose muzzles were also trained upon the 
bridge. Full caissons of ammunition were 
standing alongside, ready to feed the guns their 
death-dealing provender, and in the rear, all 
harnessed, were the horses, ready to bring up 
more caissons. 

Though in the full blaze of day, the gunners 
were standing or crouching by their guns. The 
watchers of the night lay stretched out upon the 
ground, sleeping in the warm sun after their 
long, anxious vigil. Stumbling in among them, 
I was pulled back by one of the photographers. 

"For heaven's sake," he cried, "don't wake 
up those men!" 

"Why?" I asked. 

"Because this picture I'm taking here is to be 
labeled 'Dead Men in the Termonde Trenches,' 
and you would have them starting up as though 
the day of resurrection had arrived." 

After taking these pictures we were ready to 
cross the bridge ; but the two sentries posted at 
this end were not ready to let us. They were 
very small men, but very determined, and in- 
formed us that their instructions were to al- 

176 



BELGIAN WHO SAID, "YOU BETCHA" 

low no one to pass over without a permit signed 
by the General. We produced scores of passes 
and passports decorated with stamps and seals 
and covered with myriad signatures. They 
looked these over and said that our papers were 
very nice and undoubtedly very numerous, but 
ungraciously insisted on that pass signed by 
the General. 

So back we flew to the General at Grember- 
gen. I waited outside until my companions 
emerged from the office waving passes. They 
were in a gleeful, bantering mood. That eve- 
ning they apprised me of the fact that all day 
I had been traveling as a rich American with 
my private photographers securing pictures for 
the Belgian Relief Fund. 

Leaving our automobile in charge of the 
chauffeur, we cautiously made our way over the 
bridge into the city of Termonde, or what was 
once Termonde, for it is difficult to dignify with 
the name of city a heap of battered buildings 
and crumbling brick — an ugly scar upon the 
landscape. 

I was glad to enter the ruins with my com- 
177 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

panions instead of alone. It was not so much 
fear of stray bullets from a lurking enemy as 
the suggestion of the spirits of the slain linger- 
ing round these tombs. For Termonde ap- 
peared like one vast tomb. As we first entered 
its sepulchral silences we were greatly relieved 
that the three specter-like beings who sat hud- 
dled up over a distant ruin turned out not to 
be ghosts, but natives hopelessly and patheti- 
cally surveying this wreck that was once called 
home, trying to rake out of the embers some sort 
of relic of the past. 

A regiment of hungry dogs came prowling 
up the street, and, remembering the antics of 
the past week, they looked at us as if speculat- 
ing what new species of crazy human being we 
were. To them the world of men must sud- 
denly have gone quite insane, and if there had 
been an agitator among them he might well have 
asked his fellow-dogs why they had acknowl- 
edged a race of madmen as their masters. In- 
deed, one could almost detect a sense of surprise 
that we didn't use the photographic apparatus 
to commit some new outrage. They stayed with 

178 



BELGIAN WHO SAID, "YOU BETCHA" 

us for a while, but at the sight of our cinema 
man turning the crank like a machine gun, they 
turned and ran wildly down the street. 

Emptied bottles looted from winecellars were 
strung along the curbs. To some Germans they 
had been more fatal than the Belgian bullets, 
for while one detachment of the German sol- 
diers had been setting the city blazing with pet- 
rol from the petrol flasks, others had set their 
insides on fire with liquors from the wine flasks, 
and, rolling through the town in drunken orgy, 
they had fallen headlong into the canal. 

There is a relevant item for those who seek 
further confirmation as to the reality of the 
atrocities in Belgium. If men could get so 
drunken and uncontrolled as to commit atro- 
cities on themselves (i. e., self-destruction), it 
is reasonable to infer that they could commit 
atrocities on others — and they undoubtedly did. 
The surprise lies not in the number of such 
crimes, but the fewness of them. 

Three boys who had somehow managed to 
crawl across the bridge were prodding about in 
the canals with bamboo poles. 

179 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

"What are you doing?" we inquired. 

"Fishing," they responded. 

"What for?" we asked. 

' ' Dead Germans, ' ' they replied. 

"What do you do with them — bury them?" 

"No!" they shouted derisively. "We just 
strip them of what they've got and shove 'em 
back in. ' ' 

Their search for these hapless victims was 
not motivated by any sentimental reasons, but 
simply by their business interest as local dealers 
in helmets, buttons and other German me- 
mentos. 

We took pictures of these young water- 
ghouls ; a picture of the Hotel de Ville, the cal- 
cined walls standing like a shell, the inside a 
smoking mass of debris; then a picture of a 
Belgian mitrailleuse car, manned by a crowd of 
young and jaunty dare-devils. It came swing- 
ing into the square, bringing a lot of bicycles 
from a German patrol which had just been 
mowed down outside the city. After taking a 
shot at an aeroplane buzzing away at a tre- 

180 



BELGIAN WHO SAID, "YOU BETCHA" 

mendous distance overhead, they were off again 
on another scouting trip. 

I got separated from my party and was mak- 
ing my way alone when a sharp l ' Hello ! ' ' ring- 
ing up the street, startled me. I turned to see, 
not one of the photographers, but a fully-armed, 
though somewhat diminutive, soldier in Bel- 
gian uniform waving his hand at me. 

" Hello!" he shouted; "are you an Ameri- 
can !" 

I could hardly believe my eyes or my ears, 
but managed to shout back, "Yes, yes, I'm an 
American. Are you?" I asked dubiously. 

"You betcha I'm a 'Merican," he replied, 
coming quickly up to me. It was my turn again. 

"What are you doing down here — fighting?" 
I put in fatuously. 

"What the hell you think I'm doing?" he 
rejoined. 

I now felt quite sure that he was an Ameri- 
can. Further offerings of similar "language of 
small variety but great strength" testified to 
his sojourn in the States. 

"You betcha I'm a 'Merican," he reiter- 
181 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

ated, "though I was over there but two years. 
My name is August Ridden. I worked in a 
lumber-mill in Wagner, Wisconsin. Came back 
here to visit my family. The war broke out. 
I was a Reservist and joined my regiment. 
I'm here on scout-duty. Got to find out when 
the Germans come back into the city." 

"Been in any battles?" 

"You betcha," he replied. 

"Kill any Germans?" 

"You betcha." 

"Did you enjoy it 1 ?" 

"You betcha." 

"Any around here now?" 

"You betcha. A lot of them down in the 
bushes over the brook. ' ' Then his eyes flashed 
a sudden fire as though an inspired idea had 
struck him. "There's no superior officer 
around," he exclaimed confidentially. "Come 
right down with me and you can take a pot-shot 
at the damned Boches with my rifle." He said 
it with the air of a man offering a rare treat to 
his best friend. I felt that it devolved on me 
to exhibit a proper zest for this little shooting- 

182 




The Little Belgian Who Said "You Betcha I'm a— 'Merican" 



BELGIAN WHO SAID, "YOU BETCHA" 

party and save my reputation without risking 
my skin. So I said eagerly: 

"Now are you dead sure that the Germans 
are down there 1 ?" implying that I couldn't af- 
ford any time unless the shooting was good. 

"You betcha they're down there," was his 
disconcerting reply. "You can see their green- 
gray uniforms. I counted sixteen or seventeen 
of them." 

The thought of that sixteen-to-one shot made 
my cheeks take on the color of the German uni- 
forms. The naked truth was my last resort. It 
was the only thing that could prevent my zeal- 
ous friend from dragging me forcibly down to 
the brookside. He may have heard the chatter- 
ing of my teeth. At'any rate he looked up and 
exclaimed, "What's the matter? You 'fraid?" 

I replied without any hesitation, "You 
betcha. ' ' 

The happy arrival of the photographer at this 
juncture, however, redeemed my fallen reputa- 
tion; for a soldier is always peculiarly amen- 
able to the charms of the camera and is even 
willing to quit fighting to get his picture taken. 

183 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

This photograph happens to hit off our little 
episode exactly. It shows Ridden serene, smil- 
ing, confident, and my sort of evasive hangdog 
look as though, in popular parlance, I had just 
"got one put over me." 

Then, while seated on a battered wall, Ridden 
poured out his story of the last two months 
of hardships and horrors. It was the single 
individual's share in the terrific gruelling that 
the Belgian army had received while it was 
beaten back from the eastern frontier to its 
stand on the river Scheldt. Always being 
promised aid by the Allies if they would hold 
out just a little longer, they were led again and 
again frantically to pit their puny strength 
against the overwhelming tide out of the North. 
For the moment they would stay it. Eagerly 
they would listen for sounds of approaching 
help, asking every stranger when it was com- 
ing. It never came. From position to position 
they fell back, stubbornly fighting, a flaming pil- 
lar of sparks and clouds of smoke marking the 
path of their retreat. 

Though smashed and broken that army was 
184 



BELGIAN WHO SAID, ''YOU BETCHA" 

never crushed. Its spirit was incarnate in this 
cheerful and undaunted Eidden. He recounted 
his privations as nonchalantly as if it was just 
the way that he had planned to spend his holi- 
day. As a farewell token he presented me with 
an epaulet from an officer he had killed, and a 
pin from a German woman spy he had captured. 

"Be sure to visit me when you get back to 
America," I cried out down the street to him. 

He stood waving his hand in farewell as in 
greeting, the same happy ingenuous look upon 
his face and sending after me in reply the same 
old confident standby, ' ' You betcha, ' ' But I do 
not cherish a great hope of ever seeing "Bidden 
again. The chances are that, like most of the 
Belgian army, he is no longer treading the gray 
streets of those demolished cities, but whatever 
golden streets there may be in the City Celes- 
tial. War is race suicide. It kills the best and 
leaves behind the undermuscled and the under- 
brained to propagate the species. 

Striking farther into the heart of the ruins, 
we beheld in a section all burned and shattered 

185 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

to the ground a building which stood straight 
up like a cliff intact and undamaged amidst the 
general wreckage. As we stumbled over the 
debris, imagine our surprise when an old lady 
of about seventy thrust her head out of a base- 
ment window. She was the owner of the house, 
and while the city had been the fighting ground 
for the armies she had, through it all, bravely 
stuck to her home. 

"I was born here, I have always lived here, 
and I am going to die here," she said, with a 
look of pride upon her kindly face. 

Madame Callebaut-Ringoot was her name. 
During the bombardment of the town she had 
retired to the cellar ; but when the Germans en- 
tered to burn the city she stood there at the 
door watching the flames rolling up from 
the warehouses and factories in the distance. 
Nearer and nearer came the billowing tide of 
fire. A fountain of sparks shooting up from a 
house a few hundred yards away marked the 
advance of the firing squad into her street, but 
she never wavered. Down the street came the 
spoilers, relentless, ruthless, and remorseless, 

186 



BELGIAN WHO SAID, "YOU BETCHA" 

sparing nothing. They came like priests of the 
nether world, anointing each house with oil 
from the petrol flasks and with a firebrand dedi- 
cating it to the flames. Every one, panic- 
stricken, fled before them. Every one but this 
old lady, who stood there bidding defiance to all 
the Kaiser's horses and all the Kaiser's men. 

"I saw them smashing in the door of the 
house across the way," said Madame Callebaut, 
"and when the flames burst forth they rushed 
over here, and I fell down on my knees before 
them, crying out, 'For the love of Heaven, spare 
an old woman's house!' " 

It must have been a dramatic, soul-curdling 
sight, with the wail of the woman rising above 
the crashing walls and the roaring flames. And 
it must have been effective pleading to stop 
men in their wild rush lusting to destroy. But 
Madame Callebaut was endowed with powerful 
emotions. Carried away in her recital of the 
events, she fell down on her knees before me, 
wringing her hands and pleading so piteously 
that I felt for a moment as if I were a fiendish 
Teuton with a firebrand about to set the old 

187 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

lady's house afire. I can understand how the 
wildest men capitulated to such pleadings, and 
how they came down the steps to write, in big, 
clear words, 

"ntcht ANBRENNEN" 

(Do not set fire to) 

Only they unwittingly wrote it upon her neigh- 
bor's walls, thus saving both houses. 

How much a savior of other homes Madame 
Callebaut had been Termonde will never know. 
Certainly she made the firing squad first pause 
in the wild debauch of destruction. For fre- 
quently now an undamaged house stood with 
the words chalked on its front, ' ' Only harmless 
old woman lives here; do not burn down." Un- 
derneath were the numbers and initials of the 
particular corps of the Kaiser's Imperial Army. 
Often the flames had committed Use majeste by 
leaping onto the forbidden house, and there 
amidst the charred ruins stood a door or a wall 
bearing the mocking inscription, "Nicht An- 
brenne.n." 

Another house, belonging to Madame Louise 
188 




Plucky Madame Callebaut Saved Her Home from — 




This Destruction Which Was Visited on Her City 



BELGIAN WHO SAID, "YOU BETCHA" 

Bal, bore the words, "Protected; Gute alte 
Leute hier" (good old people here). A great 
shell from a distant battery had totally disre- 
garded this sign and had torn through the par- 
lor, exploding in the back yard, ripping the 
clothes from the line, but touching neither of the 
inmates. As the Chinese ambassador perti- 
nently remarked when reassured by Whitlock 
that the Germans would not bombard the em- 
bassies, "Ah! but a cannon has no eyes." 

These houses stood up like lone survivors 
above the wreckage wrought by fire and shell, 
and by contrast served to emphasize the dismal 
havoc everywhere. "So this was once a city," 
one mused to himself; "and these streets, now 
sounding with the footfalls of some returning 
sentry, did they once echo with the roar of 
traffic? And those demolished shops, were they 
once filled with the babble of the traders 1 Over 
yonder in that structure, which looks so much 
like a church, did the faithful once come to pray 
and to worship God ? Can it be that these court- 
yards, now held in the thrall of death-like si- 
lence, once rang to the laughter of the little chil- 

189 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

dren?" One said to himself, "Surely this is 
some wild dream. Wake up." 

But hardly a dream, for here were the ruins 
of a real city, and fresh ruins, too. Still curl- 
ing up from the church was smoke from the 
burning rafters, and over there the hungry 
dogs, and the stragglers mournfully digging 
something out of the ruins. However prepos- 
terous it seemed, none the less it was a city that 
yesterday ran high with the tide of human life. 
And thousands of people, when they recall the 
lights and shadows, the pains and raptures, 
which make up the thing we call life, will think 
of Termonde. Thousands of people, when they 
think of home and all the tender memories that 
cluster round that word, say ' ' Termonde. ' ' And 
now where Termonde was there is a big black 
ragged spot — an ugly gaping wound in the land- 
scape. There are a score of other wounds like 
that. 

There are thousands of them. 

There is one bleeding in every Belgian heart. 

The sight of their desolated cities cut the sol- 
diers to the quick. 

190 



BELGIAN WHO SAID, "YOU BETCHA" 

They turned the names of those cities into 
battle cries. Shouting "Remember Termonde 
and Louvain," these Belgians sprang from the 
trenches and like wild men flung themselves 
upon the foe. 



191 



CHAPTER XI 

ATBOCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

"TTITITH these sentries holding us up at 
V V every cross-roads, there is no use try- 
ing to get to Antwerp," said the free-lance. 

"Yes, there is," retorted the chauffeur. 
' ' Watch me the next time. ' ' He beckoned to the 
first sentry barring the way, and, leaning over, 
whispered into the man's ear a single word. 
The sentry saluted, and, stepping to one side, 
motioned us on in a manner almost deferential. 
We had hardly been compelled to stop. 

After our tedious delays this was quite ex- 
hilarating. How our chauffeur obtained the 
password we did not know, nor did we challenge 
the inclusion of 8 francs extra in his memo- 
randum of expenses. As indicated, he was a 
man of parts. The magic word of the day, 
1 1 France, ' ' now opened every gate to us. 

192 



ATROCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

Behind the Antwerp fortifications the Belgian 
sappers and miners were on an organized ram- 
page of destruction. On a wide zone every 
honse, windmill and chnrch was either going up 
in flames or being hammered level to the ground, 

We came along as the oil was applied to an 
old house and saw the flames go crackling up 
through the rafters. The black smoke curled 
away across the wasted land and the fire glowed 
upon the stolid faces of the soldiers and the 
trembling woman who owned it. To her it was 
a funeral pyre. Her home endeared by lifetime 
memories was being offered up on the altar of 
Liberty and Independence. Starting with the 
invaders on the western frontier, clear through 
to Antwerp by the sea, a wild black swathe had 
been burnt. 

By such drastic methods space was cleared 
for the guns in the Belgian forts, and to the 
advancing besiegers no protection would be of- 
fered from the raking fire. The heart of a steel- 
stock owner would have rejoiced to see the maze 
of wire entanglement that ran everywhere. In 
one place a tomato-field had been wired; the 

193 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

green vines, laden with their rich red fruit, were 
intertwined with the steel vines bearing their 
vicious blood-drawing barbs whose intent was 
to make the red field redder still. We had just 
passed a gang digging man-holes and spitting 
them with stakes, when an officer cried : 

' ' Stop ! No further passage here. You must 
turn back." 

"Why?" we asked protestingly. 

"The entire road is being mined," he replied. 

Even as he spoke we could see a liquid ex- 
plosive being poured into a sort of cup, and elec- 
tric wires connected. The officer pictured to us 
a regiment of soldiers advancing, with the full 
tide of life running in their veins, laughing and 
singing as they marched in the smiling sun. 
Suddenly the road rocks and hell heaves up be- 
neath their feet ; bodies are blown into the air 
and rained back to the earth in tiny fragments 
of human flesh ; while brains are spattered over 
the ground, and every crevice runs a rivulet of 
blood. He sketched this in excellent English, 
adding : 

"A magnificent climax for Christian civili- 
194 



ATBOCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

zation, eh ! And that 's my business. But what 
else can one do ! ' ' 

For the task of setting this colossal stage for 
death, the entire peasant population had been 
mobilized to assist the soldiers. In self-defense 
Belgium was thus obliged to drive the dagger 
deep into her own bosom. It seemed indeed as 
if she suffered as much at her own hands, as at 
the hands of the enemy. To arrest the advanc- 
ing scourge she impressed into her service dyna- 
mite, fire and flood. I saw the sluice-gates lifted 
and meadows which had been waving with the 
golden grain of autumn now turned into silver 
lakes. So suddenly had the waters covered the 
land that hay-cocks bobbed upon the top of the 
flood, and peasants went out in boats to dredge 
for the beets and turnips which lay beneath the 
waters. 

The roads were inundated and so we ran 
along an embankment which, like a levee, lifted 
itself above the water wastes. The sun, sinking 
down behind the flaming poplars in the west, 
was touching the rippling surface into myriad 
colors. It was like a trip through Fairyland, or 

195 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

it would have been, were not men on all sides 
busy preparing for the bloody shambles. 

After these elaborate defensive works the 
Belgians laughed at any one taking Antwerp, 
the impregnable fortress of Western Europe. 
The Germans laughed, too. But it was the bass, 
hollow laugh of their great guns placed ten to 
twenty miles away, and pouring into the city 
such a hurricane of shell and shrapnel that they 
forced its evacuation by the British and the Bel- 
gians. Through this vast array of works which 
the reception committee had designed for their 
slaughter, the Germans came marching in as if 
on dress parade. 

A few shells were even now crashing through 
Malines and had played havoc with the carillon 
in the cathedral tower. During a lull in the 
bombardment we climbed a stairway of the bel- 
fry where, above us, balanced great stones which 
a slight jar would send tumbling down. On 
and up we passed vents and jagged holes which 
had been ripped through these massive walls as 
if they were made of paper. It was enough to 
carry the weight of one's somber reflections 

196 



ATROCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

without the addition of cheerful queries of the 
movie-man as to "how would you feel if the 
German gunners suddenly turned loose again?" 

We gathered in a deal of stone ornaments that 
had been shot down and struggled with a load 
of them to our car. Later they became a weight 
upon our conscience. When Cardinal Mercier 
starts the rebuilding of his cathedral, we might 
surprise him with the return of a consider- 
able portion thereof. To fetch these souvenirs 
through to England, we were compelled to re- 
sort to all the tricks of a gang of smugglers. 

I made also a first rate collection of German 
posters. By day I observed the location of these 
placards, announcing certain death to those who 
"sniped on German troops," "harbored cour- 
ier-pigeons," or "destroyed" these self-same 
posters. 

At night with trembling hands I laid cold 
compresses on them until the adhering paste 
gave way ; then, tucking the wet sheets beneath 
my coat, I stole back to safety. At last in Eng- 
land I feasted my eyes on the precious docu- 
ments, dreaming of the time when posterity 

197 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

should rejoice in the possession of these posters 
relating to the German overlordship of Bel- 
gium, and give thanks to the courage of their 
collector. Unfortunately, their stained and torn 
appearance grated on the aesthetic sensibilities 
of the maid. 

"Where are they?" I demanded on my re- 
turn to my room one time, as I missed them. 

"Those nasty papers?" she inquired naively. 

"Those priceless souvenirs," I returned se- 
verely. She did not comprehend, but with a 
most aggravatingly sweet expression said: 

"They were so dirty, sir, I burned them all 
up." • 

She couldn't understand why I rewarded her 
with something akin to a fit of apoplexy, instead 
of a liberal tip. That day was a red-letter one 
for our photographers. They paid the price 
in the risks which constantly strained their 
nerves. But in it they garnered vastly more 
than in the fortnight they had hugged safety. 

But, despite all our efforts, there was one 
object that we were after that we never did at- 

198 



ATEOCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

tain. That was a first-class atrocity picture. 
There were atrocity stories in endless variety, 
but not one that the camera could authenticate. 
People were growing chary of verbal assurances 
of these horrors ; they yearned for some photo- 
graphic proof, and we yearned to furnish it. 

"What features are you looking for?" was 
the question invariably put to us on discovering 
our cameras. 

"Children with their hands cut off," we re- 
plied. "Are there any around here 1 ?" 

"Oh, yes! Hundreds of them," was the in- 
variable assurance. 

"Yes, but all we want is one — just one in 
flesh and bone. Where can we find that?" 

The answer was ever the same. "In the hos- 
pital at the rear, or at the front." "Back in 
such-and-such a village," etc. Always some- 
where else ; never where we were. 

Let no one attempt to gloss the cruelties 
perpetrated in Belgium. My individual wish is 
to see them pictured as crimson as possible, 
that men may the fiercer revolt against the 
shame and horror of this red butchery called 

199 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

war. But this is a record of just one observer's 
reactions and experiences in the war zone. Af- 
ter weeks in this contested ground, the word 
"atrocity" now calls up to my mind hardly any- 
thing I saw in Belgium, but always the sav- 
ageries I have witnessed at home in America. 

For example, the organized frightfulness that 
I once witnessed in Boston. Around the strik- 
ers picketing a factory were the police in full 
force and a gang of thugs. Suddenly at the 
signal of a shrill whistle, sticks were drawn 
from under coats and, right and left, men were 
felled to the cobblestones. After a running fight 
a score were stretched out unconscious, upon 
the square. As blood poured out of the gashes, 
like tigers intoxicated by the sight and smell 
thereof, the assailants became frenzied, kicking 
and beating their victims, already insensible. 
In a trice the beasts within had been unleashed. 

If in normal times men can lay aside every 
semblance of restraint and decency and turn 
into raging fiends, how much greater cause is 
there for such a transformation to be wrought 
under the stress of war when, by government 

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ATROCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

decree, the sixth commandment is suspended 
and killing has become glorified. At any rate 
my experiences in America make credible the 
tales told in Belgium. 

But there are no pictures of these outrages 
such as the Germans secured after the Rus- 
sian drive into their country early in the war. 
Here are windrows of mutilated Germans with 
gouged eyes and mangled limbs, attesting to 
that same senseless bestial ferocity which lies 
beneath the veneer. 

All the photographers were fired with desire 
to make a similar picture in Belgium, yet though 
we raced here and there, and everywhere that 
rumor led us, we found it but a futile chase. 

Through the Great Hall in Ghent there 
poured 100,000 refugees. Here we pleaded how 
absolutely imperative it was that we should ob- 
tain an atrocity picture. The daughter of the 
burgomaster, who was in charge, understood 
our plight and promised to do her best. But 
out of the vast concourse she was able to un- 
cover but one case that could possibly do service 
as an atrocity. 

201 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

It was that of a blind peasant woman with 
her six children. The photographers told her 
to smile, bnt she didn't, nor did the older chil- 
dren; they had suffered too horribly to make 
smiling easy. When the Germans entered the 
village the mother was in bed with her day- 
old baby. Her husband was seized and, with 
the other men, marched away, as the practice 
was at that period of the invasion, for some 
unaccountable reason. With the roof blazing 
over her head, she was compelled to arise from 
her bed and drag herself for miles before she 
found a refuge. I related this to a German 
later and he said: "Oh, well, there are plenty 
of peasant women in the Fatherland who are 
hard at work in the fields three days after the 
birth of their child." 

The Hall filled with women wailing for chil- 
dren, furnished heartrending sights, but no vic- 
tim bore such physical marks as the most vivid 
imagination could construe into an atrocity. 

"I can't explain why we don't get a picture," 

said the free lance. " Enough deviltry has been 

202 



ATROCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

done. I can't see why some of the stuff doesn't 
come through to us." 

' ' Simply because the Germans are not fools, ' ' 
replied the movie-man; "when they mutilate a 
victim, they go through with it to the finish. 
They take care not to let telltales go straggling 
out to damn them." 

Some one proposed that the only way to get 
a first-class atrocity picture was to fake it. It 
was a big temptation, and a fine field for the 
exercise of their inventive genius. . But on this 
issue the chorus of dissent was most emphatic. 

The nearest that I came to an atrocity was 
when in a car with Van Hee, the American vice- 
consul at Ghent. Van Hee was a man of laconic 
speech and direct action. I told him what 
Lethbridge, the British consul, had told me ; viz., 
that the citizens of Ghent must forthwith erect 
a statue of Van Hee in gold to commemorate 
his priceless services. ' ' The gold idea appeals 
to me, all right," said Van Hee, "but why put 
it in a statue?" He routed me out at five 
one morning to tell me that I could go through 
the German lines with Mr. Fletcher into Brus- 

203 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

sels. We left the Belgian Army cheering the 
Stars and Stripes, and came to the outpost of 
sharpshooters. Crouching behind a barricade, 
they were looking down the road. They didn't 
know whether the Germans were half a mile, 
two miles, or five miles down that road. 

Into that uncertain No-Man 's-Land we drove 
with only our honking to disturb the silence, 
while our minds kept growing specters of 
Uhlans the size of Goliath. Fletcher and I kept 
up a hectic conversation upon the flora and 
fauna of the country. But Van Hee, being of 
strong nerves, always gleefully brought the talk 
back to Uhlans. 

"How can you tell an Uhlan?" I faltered. 

"If you see a big gray man on horseback, 
with a long lance, spearing children, ' ' said Van 
Hee, "why, that's an Uhlan." 

Turning a sharp corner, we ran straight 
ahead into a Belgian bicycle division — scouting 
in this uncertain zone. In a flash they were off 
their wheels, rifles at their shoulders and fin- 
gers on triggers. 

Two boys, gasping with fear, thrust their 
204 



ATEOCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

guns up into our very faces. In our gray coats 
we had been taken for a party of German offi- 
cers. They were positive that a peasant was 
hanging in a barn not far away. But we in- 
sisted that our nerves had had enough for the 
day. Even Van Hee was willing to let the con- 
versation drift back to flowers and birds. We 
drove along in chastened spirit until hailed by 
the German outpost, about five miles from 
where we had left the Belgians. No-Man's- 
Land was wide in those days. 

But what is it that really constitutes an 
atrocity? In a refugee shed, sleeping on the 
straw, we found an old woman of 88. All that 
was left to her was her shawl, her dress, and 
the faint hope of seeing two sons for whom 
she wept. Extreme old age is pitiful in itself. 
With homelessness it is tragic. But such home- 
less old age as this, with scarce one flickering 
ray of hope, is double-distilled tragedy. If 
some marauder had bayoneted her, and she 
had died therefrom, it would have been a kindly 
release from all the anguish that the future 

205 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

now held in store for her. Of course that merci- 
ful act would have constituted an atrocity, be- 
cause it would have been a breach in the rules 
of the war game. 

But in focusing our attention upon the viola- 
tions of the code, we are apt to forget the great- 
er atrocity of the violation of Belgium, and the 
whole hideous atrocity of the great war. That 
is getting things out of proportion, for the suf- 
ferings entailed by these technical atrocities are 
infinitesimal alongside of those resulting from 
the war itself. 

Another point has been quite overlooked. In 
recounting the atrocities wrought by Prussian 
Imperialism, no mention is made of those that 
it has committed upon its own people. And yet 
at any rate a few Germans suffered in the claws 
of the German eagle quite as cruelly as any Bel- 
gians did. One fine morning in September three 
Germans came careening into Ghent in a great 
motor car. They were dazed to find no evi- 
dence of their army which they supposed was 
in possession. Before the men became aware 
of their mistake, a Belgian mitrailleuse poured 

206 



ATROCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

a stream of lead into their midst, killing two of 
them outright. The third German, with a ball 
in his neck, was rescued by Van Hee and placed 
under the protection of the American flag. 

Incidentally that summary action, followed 
by a quick visit to the German general in his 
camp on the outskirts, saved the city. That is 
a long story. It is told in Alexander Powell's 
"Fighting in Flanders," but it suffices here to 
state that by a pact between the Belgian burgo- 
master of Ghent and the German commandant 
it was understood that the wounded man was 
not to be considered a prisoner, but under the 
jurisdiction of the American Consulate. 

A week after this incident Van Hee paid his 
first visit to this wounded man in the Belgian 
hospital. He was an honest fellow of about 
forty — the type of working-man who had 
aspired to nothing beyond a chance to toil and 
raise a family for the Fatherland. Weltpolitik, 
with its vaunting boast of "World-power or 
Downfall," was meaningless to him and his 
comrades gathered in the beer-gardens on a 
Sunday. 

207 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

Suddenly out of this quiet, uneventful life lie 
was called to the colors and sent killing and 
and burning through the Belgian villages. 
His officers had told him that it would be a 
sorry thing for any German soldier to be cap- 
tured, for these Belgians, maddened by the pil- 
lage of their country, would take a terrible re- 
venge upon any luckless wretches that fell into 
their hands. Now, more suddenly than any- 
thing else had ever happened in his life, a bullet 
had stabbed him in the throat and he found him- 
self a prisoner at the mercy of these dreaded 
Belgians. 

"Why are they tending me so carefully dur- 
ing these last seven days?" "Are they getting 
me ready for the torturing?" "Are they mak- 
ing me well in order that I may suffer all the 
more?" Grim speculation of that kind must 
have been running through his simple mind. 
For when we opened the door of his room, he 
slunk cowering over to his bed, staring at us as 
if we were inquisitors about to lead him away 
to the torture chamber, there to suffer vicari- 
ously for all the crimes of the German army. 

208 



ATROCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

His body, already shrunken by overwork, visi- 
bly quivered before us, the perspiration bead- 
ing on his ashen face. 

We had come to apprise him of his present 
status as a citizen under the protectorate of 
America. 

Van Hee approached the subject casually 
with the remark: "You see, you are not a 
Frenchman ! ' ' 

"No, I am not a Frenchman,' ' the quailing 
fellow mechanically repeated. 

"And you are not a Belgian," resumed Van 
Hee. 

He was not quite sure about disclaiming that, 
but he saw what was expected of him. So he 
faltered : ' ' No, I am not a Belgian. ' ' 

"And you are not an Englishman, eh?" 

According to formula he answered : 

1 ' No, I am not an Englishman ! ' ' but I sensed 
a bit more of emphasis in the disavowal of any 
English taint to his blood. 

Van Hee was taking this process of elimina- 
tion in order to clear the field so that his man 

209 



IN THE CLAWS OP THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

could grasp the fact that he was to all intents 
an American, and at last he said : 

"No longer are you a German either." 

The poor fellow was in deep seas, and breath- 
ing hard. Everything about him proclaimed 
the fact that he was a German, even to his field- 
gray uniform, and he knew it. But he did not 
venture to contradict Van Hee, and he whis- 
pered hoarsely: "No, I am not a German 
either. ' ' 

He was completely demoralized, a picture of 
utter desolation. 

"If you are not German, or Belgian, or 
French, or English, what are you then?" 

The poor fellow whimpered: "0 Gott! I 
don't know what I am." 

" I '11 tell you what you are. You 're an Amer- 
ican!" exclaimed Van Hee with great gusto. 
"That's what you are — an American! Get 
that ? An American ! ' ' 

11 J a, ja ich bin ein Amerikaner ! " he eagerly 
cried ("Yes, yes, I am an American!"), re- 
lieved to find himself no longer a man without a 
country. Had he been told that he was a Hin- 

210 



ATROCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

doo, or an Eskimo, he would have acquiesced 
as obediently. 

But when he was shown an American flag 
and it began to dawn on him that he had noth- 
ing more to fear from his captors, his tense- 
ness relaxed. And when Van Hee said: "As 
the American consul I shall do what I can for 
you. What is it you want the most?" a light 
shone in the German's eyes and he replied: 

"I want to go home. I want to see my wife 
and children." 

"I thought you came down here because you 
wanted to see the war," said Van Hee. 

"War!" he gasped, and putting hands up to 
his eyes as if to shut out some awful sights, he 
began muttering incoherently about "Lou- 
vain," "children screaming," "blood all over 
his breast," repeating constantly " schrecklich, 
schrecklich." "I don't want to see any more 
war. I want to see my wife and my three chil- 
dren ! ' ' 

"The big guns! Do you hear them 1 ?" I said. 

"I don't want to hear them," he answered, 
shaking his head. 

211 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

" They're killing yon Germans by the thou- 
sands down there," announced Van Hee. "I 
should think you would want to get out and Mil 
the French and the English." 

"I don't want to kill anybody," he repeated. 
' ' I never did want to kill anybody. I only want 
to go home. " As we left him he was repeating 
a refrain: "I want to go home" — " Schrecklich, 
schrecJclich." "I never did want to kill any- 
body." 

Every instinct in that man's soul was against 
the murder he had been set to do. His con- 
science had been crucified. A ruthless power 
had invaded his domain, dragged him from his 
hearthside, placed a gun in his hands and said 
to him: "Kill!" 

Perhaps before the war, as he had drilled 
along the German roads, he had made some 
feeble protest. But then war seemed so unreal 
and so far away ; now the horror of it was in his 
soul. 

A few days later Van Hee was obliged to re- 
turn him to the German lines. Again he was 

212 



ATROCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

marched out to the shambles to take up the 
killings against which his whole nature was in 
rebellion. No slave ever went whipped to his 
task with greater loathing. 

Once I saw slowly plodding back into Brus- 
sels a long gray line of soldiers; the sky, too, 
was gray and a gray weariness had settled down 
upon the spirits of these troops returning from 
the destruction of a village. I was standing by 
the roadside holding in my arms a refugee 
baby. 

Its attention was caught by an officer on 
horseback and in baby fashion it began waving 
its hand at him. Arrested by this sudden gleam 
of human sunshine the stern features of the 
officer relaxed into a smile. Forgetting for the 
moment his dignity he waved his hand at the 
baby in a return salute, turning his face away 
from his men that they might not see the tears 
in his eyes. But we could see them. 

Perhaps through those tears he saw the 
mirage of his own fireside. Perhaps for the 
moment his homing spirit rested there, and it 
was only the body from which the soul had fled 

213 



IN THE CLAWS OP THE GERMAN EAGLE 

that was in the saddle here before us riding 
through a hostile land. Perhaps more power- 
fully than the fulminations of any orator had 
this greeting of a little child operated to smite 
him with the senseless folly of this war. Who 
knows but that right then there came flashing 
into his mind the thought: "Why not be done 
with this cruel orphaning of Belgian babies, 
this burning down of their homes and turning 
them adrift upon the world V 9 

Brutalizing as may be the effect of militarism 
in action, fortified as its devotees may be by all 
the iron ethics of its code, I cannot help but be- 
lieve that here again the ever-recurring miracle 
of repentance and regeneration had been 
wrought by the grace of a baby's smile; that 
again this stern-visaged officer had become just 
a human being longing for peace and home, re- 
volting against laying waste the peace and 
homes of his fellowmen. But to what avail? 
All things would conspire to make him conform 
and stifle the revolt within. How could he es- 
cape from the toils in which he was held? Next 

214 



ATROCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

morrow or next week he would again be in the 
saddle riding out to destruction. 

The irony of history again ! It was this Ger- 
man folk who said, centuries ago : "No religious 
authority shall invade the sacred precincts of 
the soul and compel men to act counter to their 
deepest convictions." In a costly struggle the 
fetters of the church were broken. But now a 
new iron despotism is riveted upon them. The 
great state has become the keeper of men's con- 
sciences. The dragooning of the soul goes on 
just the same. Only the power to do it has been 
transferred from the priests to the officers of 
the state. To compel men to kill when their 
whole beings cry out against it, is an atrocity 
upon the souls of men as real as any committed 
upon the bodies of the Belgians. 

Amidst the wild exploits and wilder rumors 
of those crucial days when Belgium was the 
central figure in the world-war, the calmness of 
the natives was a source of constant wonder. 
In the regions where the Germans had not yet 

215 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

come they went on with their accustomed round 
of eating, drinking and trading with a sang 
froid that was distressing to the fevered out- 
sider. 

Yet beneath this surface calmness and gay- 
ety ran a smoldering hate, of whose presence 
one never dreamed, unless he saw it shoot out 
in an ugly flare. 

I saw this at Antwerp when about 300 of 
us had been herded into one of the great halls. 
As one by one the suspects came up to the exit 
gate to be overhauled by the examiners, I 
thought that there never could be such a com- 
placent, dead-souled crowd as this. They had 
dully waited for two hours with scarce a mur- 
mur. 

The most pathetic weather-worn old man — a 
farm drudge, I surmise — came up to the exit. 
All I heard were the words of the officer: 
"You speak German, eh?" 

At a flash this dead throng became an in- 
furiated blood-thirsting mob. " Allemand! 
Espion!" it shouted, swinging forward until 

216 



ATEOCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

the gates sagged. "Kill him! Kill the damned 
German ! ' ' 

The mob would have put its own demand 
into execution but for the soldiers, who flung 
the poor quivering fellow into one corner and 
pushed back the Belgians, eager to trample him 
to the station floor. 

There was the girl Yvonne, who, while the 
color was mounting to her pretty face, informed 
us that she "wanted the soldiers to heel every 
German in the world. No, ' J she added, her dark 
eyes snapping fire, "I want them to leave just 
one. The last one I shall heel myself ! ' ' 

Yet, every example of Belgian ferocity to- 
wards the spoilers one could match with ten 
of Belgian magnanimity. We obtained a pic- 
ture of Max Crepin, carbinier voluntaire, in 
which he looks seventy years of age — he was 
really seventeen. At the battle of Melle he had 
fallen into the hands of the Germans after a 
bullet had passed clean through both cheeks. 
In their retreat the Germans had left Max in 
the bushes, and he was now safe with his 
friends. 

217 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEBMAN EAGLE 

He could not speak, but the first thing he 
wrote in the little book the nurse handed him 
was, "The Germans were very kind to me." 
There was a line about his father and mother; 
then "We had to lie flat in the bushes for two 
days. One German took off his coat and 
wrapped it around me, though he was cold him- 
self. Another German gave me all the water in 
his canteen. ' ' Then came a line about a friend, 
and finally : ' ' The Germans were very kind to 
me." I fear that Max would not rank high 
among the haters. 

Whenever passion swept and tempted to join 
their ranks, the figure of Gremberg comes loom- 
ing up to rebuke me. He was a common soldier 
whose camaraderie I enjoyed for ten days dur- 
ing the skirmishing before Antwerp. In him 
the whole tragedy of Belgium was incarnated. 
He had lost his two brothers; they had gone 
down before the German bullets. He had lost 
his home; it had gone up in flames from the 
German torch. He had lost his country ; it had 
been submerged beneath the gray horde out 
of the north. 

218 



ATEOCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

"Why is it, Gremberg," I asked, "you never 
rage against the Bodies? I should think you 
would delight to lay your hands on every Ger- 
man and tear him into bits. Yet you don't 
seem to feel that way. ' ' 

"No, I don't," he answered. "For if I had 
been born a Boche, I know that I would act 
just like any Boche. I would do just as I was 
ordered to do." 

"But the men who do the ordering, the of- 
ficers and the military caste, the whole Prus- 
sian outfit?" 

"Well, I have it in for that crowd," Grem- 
berg replied, "but, you see, I'm a Socialist, and 
I know they can 't help it. They get their orders 
from the capitalists." 

The capitalists, he explained, were likewise 
caught in the vicious toils of the system and 
could act no differently. Bayonet in hand, he 
expounded the whole Marxian philosophy as 
he had learned it at the Voorhuit in Ghent. The 
capitalists of Germany were racing with the 
capitalists of England for the markets of the 

219 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

world, so they couldn't help being pitted against 
each other. The war was simply the transfer- 
ence of the conflict from the industrial to the 
military plane, and Belgium, the ancient cock- 
pit of Europe, was again the battlefield. 

He emphasized each point by poking me with 
his bayonet. As an instrument of argument 
it is most persuasive. When I was a bit dense, 
he would press harder until I saw the light. 
Then he would pass on to the next point. 

I told him that I had been to Humanite's of- 
fice in Paris after Jaures was shot, and the 
editors, pointing to a great pile of anti-war 
posters, explained that so quickly had the mobi- 
lization been accomplished, that there had been 
no time to affix these to the walls. 

"The French Socialists had some excuse for 
their going out to murder their fellow work- 
ers," I said, "and the Germans had to go or 
get shot, but you are a volunteer. You went 
to war of your own free-will, and you call your- 
self a Socialist. " 

"I am, but so am I a Belgian!" he answered 
220 



ATBOCITIES AND THE SOCIALIST 

hotly. ''We talked against war, but when war 
came and my land was trampled, something 
rose up within me and made me fight. That's 
all. It's all right to stand apart, hut you don't 
know. ' ' 

I did know what it was to be passion swept, 
but, however, I went on baiting him. 

"Well, I suppose that you are pretty well 
cured of your Socialism, because it failed, like 
everything else." 

"Yes, it did," he answered regretfully, "but 
at any rate people are surprised at Socialists 
killing one another — not at the Christians. And 
anyhow if there had been twice as many priests 
and churches and lawyers and high officials, 
that would not have delayed the war. It would 
have come sooner; but if there had been twice 
as many Socialists there would have been no 
war. ' ' 

The free-lance interrupted to call him out for 
a picture before it was too dark. Gremberg 
took his position on the trench, his hand shad- 
ing his eyes. It is the famous iron trench at 
Melle from which the Germans had withdrawn. 

221 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

{See Frontispiece.) He is not looking for the 
enemy. If they were near, ten bullets would 
have brought him down in as many seconds. He 
is looking into the West. 

And to me he is a symbol of all the soldiers 
of Europe, and all the women of Europe who 
huddle to their breasts their white-faced, sob- 
bing children. They are all looking into the 
West, for there lies Hope. There lies America. 
And their prayer is that the young republic of 
the West shall not follow the blood-rusted paths 
of militarism, but somehow may blaze the way 
out of chaos into a new world-order. 



222 




Starting the March Amidst Friends and Flowers and — 




Ending It as Captives in the Hands of the Enemy 



Paet IV 
LOVE AMONG THE BUINS 




In the Cathedral 



CHAPTEE XII 

THE BEATING OF "THE GENEKAL" 

I HE saddest sound in all the world," says 
Sardou, "is the beating of 'the Gen- 
eral.' " On that fateful Saturday afternoon in 
August, after nearly fifty years of silence 
through the length and breadth of France, there 
sounded again the ominous throbbing of the 
drums calling for the general mobilization of 
the nation. At its sound the French industrial 
army melted into a military one. Ploughshares 
and pruning-hooks were beaten into machine- 
guns and Lebel rifles. The civilian straightway 
became a soldier. 

We were returning from Malmaison, the 
home where Napoleon spent with Josephine the 
happiest moments of his life. Our Parisian 
guide and chauffeur were in chatting, cheerful 

225 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

mood though fully alive to all the rumors of 
war. They were sons of France, from their in- 
fancy drilled in the idea that some day with 
their comrades they were to hear this very drum 
calling them to march from their homes; they 
had even been taught to cherish the coming of 
this day when they should redeem the tarnished 
glory of France by helping to plant the tricolor 
over the lost provinces of Alsace and Lor- 
raine. 

But that the dreaded, yet hoped-for day had 
really arrived, seemed preposterous and incred- 
ible — incredible until we drove into the village 
of Reuilly where an eager crowd, gathering 
around a soldier with a drum, caused our chauf- 
feur to draw sharply up beside the curb and 
we came to a stop twenty feet from the drum- 
mer. He was a man gray enough to have been, 
if not a soldier, at least a drummer boy in 1870. 
The pride that was his now in being the official 
herald of portentous news was overcast by an 
evident sorrow. 

As if conscious of the fact that he was to 
pound not on the dead dry skin of his drum, but 

226 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENERAL' » 

on living human hearts, he hesitated a moment 
before he let the sticks falls. Then sharp and 
loud throbbed the drum through the still-hushed 
street. Clear and resolute was the voice in which 
he read the order for mobilization. The whole 
affair took little more than a minute. Those 
who know how heavily the disgrace and dis- 
aster of 1870 lie upon the French heart will 
admit that it is fair to say that all their life 
this crowd had lived for this moment. Now 
that it had come, they took it with tense white 
looks upon their faces. But not a cheer, not 
a cry, not a shaking of the fist. 

The only outwardly tragic touch came from 
our chauffeur. When he heard the words "la 
mobilisation" he flung down his cap, threw up 
his hands, bowed his head a second, then 
gripped his steering wheel and, for fifteen miles, 
drove desperately, accurately, as though his car 
were a winged bullet shooting straight into the 
face of the enemy. That fifteen-mile run from 
Reuilly to Paris was through a long lane of sor- 
row: for not to one section or class, but to all 
France had come the call to mobilize. Every 

227 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

home had been summoned to the sacrifice of its 
sons. 

We witnessed nowhere any wailings or wring- 
ing of hands or frantic, foolish pleading to stay 
at home. Long ago the question of their dear 
ones going had been settled. Through the years 
they had made ready their hearts for this offer- 
ing and now they gave with a glad exaltation. 
How bravely the French woman met the de- 
mand upon her, only those of us who moved in 
and out among the homes during those days of 
mobilization can testify. The "General" was 
indeed to these mothers, wives and sweethearts 
left behind the saddest sound in all the world. 

But if it were so sad as Sardou said in 1870, 
when 500,000 answered to its call, how infinitely 
sadder was it in 1914 when ten times that num- 
ber responded to its wild alarum, a million 
never returning to the women that had loved 
them. But such statistics are just the unemo- 
tional symbols of misery. We can look at this 
colossal sum of human tragedy without being 
gripped one whit. If we look into the soul of 

228 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENERAL" 

one woman these figures become invested with 
a new and terrible meaning. 

Such an opportunity was strangely given me 
as we stood in a long queue outside the Ameri- 
can embassy waiting for the passports that 
would make our personages sacrosanct when the 
German raiders took the city. A perspiring 
line, we shuffled slowly forward, thanking God- 
that we were not as the Europeans, but had 
had the good sense to be born Americans. 
While in the next breath we tiraded against the 
self-same Government for not hurrying the 
American fleet to the rescue. 

The alien-looking gentleman behind me 
mopped his brow and muttered something about 
wishing that he had .not thirsted for other " joys 
than those of old St. Louis." 

"Pennsylvania has her good points, too," I 
responded. 

That random shot opened wide to me the 
gates of Romance and High Adventure. It 
broke the long silence of the girl just ahead. 

"It's comforting just to hear the name of 
one's own home state," she said. "I lived in 

229 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

a little village in the western part of Pennsyl- 
vania," and, incidentally, she named the vil- 
lage where my father had once been minister of 
the church. I explained as much to her and 
marveled at the coincidence. 

"More marvel still," she said, "for we come 
not only from the same state and the same vil- 
lage, but from the same house. My father was 
minister in that same church." 

Nickleville is the prosaic name of that little 
hamlet in western Pennsylvania. Any gentle 
reader with a cynic strain there may verify this 
chronicle and find fresh confirmation for the 
ancient adage that "Fact is stranger far than 
Fiction." 

That selfsame evening we held reunion in 
a cafe off the Boulevard Clichy. There I first 
discerned the slightness of her frame and mar- 
veled at the spirit that filled it. She was ex- 
uberant in the joy of meeting a countryman 
and, with the device of laughter, she kept in 
check the sadness which never quite came well- 
ing up in tears. 

She was typical American but let her 
230 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENERAL" 

bear here the name by which her new friends 
in France called her — Marie. One might linger 
upon her large eyes and golden hair, but this is 
not the epic of a fair face but of a fair soul — 
vigorous and determined, too. To the power 
therein even the stolid waiter paid his homage. 

"Pardon," he interjected once, "we must 
close now. The orders are for all lights out 
by nine. It is the government. They fear the 
Zeppelins. ' ' 

"But that's just what I'm afraid of, too," 
Marie answered. "How can you turn us out 
into that darkness filled with Zeppelins?" He 
succumbed to this radiant banter and, covering 
every crevice that might emit a ray of light, 
he let us linger on long after closing time. 

Marie's was one of those classic souls which 
by some anomaly, passing by the older lineages 
and cultures of the East, find birth-place in a 
bleak untutored village of the West. To this 
bareness some succumb, and the divine afflatus 
dies. Still others roam restlessly up and down, 
searching until they find their milieu and then 
for the first time their spirit glows. 

231 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

Music had breathed upon this girl's spirit, 
touched with a vagabond desire. To satisfy it 
she must have money. So she gave lessons to 
children. Then a publisher bought some little 
melodies that she had set to words. And lastly, 
grave and reverend committeemen, after hesi- 
tating over her youth, made her head of music 
in a university of western Montana. 

Early in 1914, with her gold reserves grown 
large enough for the venture, she set sail for 
the siege of Paris. To her charm and sterling 
worth it had soon capitulated — a quicker vic- 
tory than she had dared to hope for. Around 
her studio in a street off the Champs Elysees 
she gathered a coterie of kindred souls. She 
told of the idealism and camaraderie of the lit- 
tle circle, while its foibles she touched upon with 
much merriment. Behind this outward jesting 
I gained a glimpse of the fight she had made for 
her advance. 

"It's been hard," I said, "but what a lot you 
have found along the way." 

"Yes, far more than you can imagine," she 
replied; "I have found Robert le Marchand." 

232 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENERAL" 

"And who is he?" 

"Well, he is an artist and an athlete, and 
he is just back from Albania — where he had 
most wonderful adventures. He has written 
them up for 'Gaulois.' His home is in Nor- 
mandy. And he is heir to a large estate in Italy 
in the South — in what looks like the heel on the 
map. And he has a degree from the Sorbonne 
and he is the real prince of our little court. 
And, best of all, he loves me." 

Then she told the story of her becoming the 
princess of the little court. 

"Prom his ancestral place in Italy," she said, 
"Robert sent me baskets of fruit gathered in 
his groves by his own hands. In one he placed 
a sprig of orange-blossoms. We laughed about 
it when we met again and " 

I saw that after this affairs had ripened to 
a quick conclusion. In drives along the boule- 
vards, in walks through the moonlit woods, at 
dinners, concerts, dances — these two mingled 
their dreams for their home in Normandy. The 
only discord in this summer symphony was a 
frowning father. 

233 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

Marie was the epitome of all charms and 
graces. Yes. But she came undowered — that 
was all. And firm he stood against any breach 
in the long established code of his class. But 
they did not suffer this to disturb their plans 
and reveries, and through those soft July days 
they roamed together in their lotus-land. Then 
suddenly thundered that dream-shattering can- 
non out of the north. 

"I was out of town for the week end," Marie 
continued; "I heard the beating of the 'Gen- 
eral' and at call for mobilization I flew back here 
as quickly as I could. It was too late. There 
was only a note saying that he had gone, and 
how hard it was to go without one farewell. ' ' 

' ' Now what are you going to do ? " 

1 i What can I do with Robert gone and all his 
friends in the army too?" 

''Let me do what I can. Let me play substi- 
tute," I volunteered. 

"Do you really mean what you just said?" 
she queried. 

"I really do," I answered. 

"Well, then, do you paddle a canoe?" 
234 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENERAL " 

"Yes, but what has that to do with the ques- 
tion?" I replied perplexedly. 

"Everything," she responded. "Robert is 
stationed at Corbeille, fifteen miles below here 
on the Seine. I have the canoe and to-morrow I 
want you to go with me down the river to Rob- 
ert." 

My mind made a swift diagnosis of the situa- 
tion. All exits from Paris carefully watched; 
suspicion rife everywhere — strangers off in a 
canoe ; a sentinel challenge and a shot from the 
bank. 

"Let us first consider " I began. 

"We can do that in the canoe to-morrow," 
she interrupted. 

And I capitulated, quite as Paris had. 

We stepped out into the darkness that cloaked 
the silent city from its aerial ravagers. As we 
walked I mused upon this modern maiden's 
Iliad. While a thousand hug the quiet haven, 
what was it that impelled the one to cut moor- 
ings and range the deep f A chorus of croaking 
frogs greeted our turn into a park. 

"Funny," said Marie, "but frogs drove me 
235 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

out of Nickleville! There was nothing to do 
at home but to listen to their eternal noise; to 
save my nerves I simply had to break away." 

The prospect of that canoe trip was not con- 
ducive to easy slumber. The frog chorus in 
that Pennsylvania swamp, why had it not been 
less demonstrative? Still lots could happen be- 
fore morning. One might develop appendicitis 
or the Germans might get the city. With these 
two comforting hopes I fell asleep. Morning 
realizing neither of them, I walked over to 
Marie's studio. 

"Well, then, all ready for the expedition?" 
I said, masking my pessimism with a smile. 

For reply she handed this note which read: 

"Dear Marie: I have been transferred from Cor- 
beille to Melun. It makes me ill to be getting ever 
farther and farther away. — Robert." 

With the river trip cancelled, life looked more 
roseate to me. "And now we can't go after 
all, ' ' I said, mustering this time the appearance 
of sadness. 

236 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENERAL" 

"Oh, don't look so relieved, " she laughed, 
"because we're going anyhow." 

"But what's the use? He has gone." 

"Well, we are going where he has gone, that's 
all," she retorted. 

I pointed out the facts that only military 
trains were running to Melun; that we weren't 
soldiers ; that the river was out of the question ; 
that we had no aeroplane and that we couldn't 
go overland in a canoe. 

"But we can with our wits," Marie added. 

I explained how lame my wits were in French, 
and that two consecutive sentences would bring 
on trial for high treason to the language. 

' ' Oh, but you don 't furnish the wits, ' ' Marie 
retorted. "You just furnish the body." 

In her plan of campaign I gathered that I 
was to act as a kind of convoy, from which she 
was to dart forth, torpedoing all obstacles. I 
was quite confident of her torpedoing ability 
but not of my fitness to play a star part as a 
dour and fear-inspiring background. 

She packed her bag and presently we were 
237 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

making our way to the station through a 
blighted city. 

At the Gare du Nord a cordon of soldiers had 
been thrown about the station; crowds surged 
up against the gates, a few frantically pleading 
and even crying to get through. The guards, to 
every plea and threat returned a harsh "C'est 
impossible." Undaunted by the despair of 
others, she looked straight into the eyes of the 
somber gate-keeper and, with every art, told the 
story of Robert le Marchand, brave young offi- 
cer of France ; of his American girl and his deep 
longing for her. When she had stirred this 
lethargic functionary into a show of interest in 
this girl, with a revealing gesture she said: 
"And here she is ; please, Monsieur, let me go." 

"Ah, Mademoiselle, I would like to," he re- 
plied, "but are not all the soldiers of France 
longing for wives and sweethearts'? Mon Dieu! 
if they all rode there would be no room for the 
militaire. The Bodies would take us in the 
midst of our farewells. There is never any end 
to leave-takings. ' ' 

238 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENEBAL" 

"But, Monsieur, I did not have one good- 
by." 

"No, Mademoiselle. C'est impossible." 

The guardian of the second gate took her plea 
in a way that did more credit to his heart than 
to his knowledge of geography. He thought (and 
we made no effort to disillusionize him) that 
she had come all the way from America since 
the outbreak of war. It nearly moved him to 
tears. Was he surrendering? Almost. But re- 
covering his official negative head-shake and 
trusting not to words, he fell back upon the 
formula: "No, Madame, c'est impossible." 

The truth had failed and so had the half-truth. 
To the next forbidding guard Marie came as a 
Eed Cross nurse, hurrying to her station. 

"Your uniform, Madame," he interposed. 

1 ' No time to get a uniform ; no time to get a 
permission," she explained. 

"Take time, Madame," was his brusque dis- 
missal. 

Each time rebuffed, she tried again, but 
against the full battery of her blandishments 
the line was adamant. 

239 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

"It's no use," I said. "We may as well go 
home.' ' 

"No retreat until we've tried our last re- 
serves," she responded, clinking some coins to- 
gether in her hand. "We'll try a change of 
tactics. ' ' 

We reconnoitered and decided that an open- 
ing might be made through guardian number 
two. He had almost surrendered in the first en- 
gagement. This time, along with the smile, she 
flashed a coin. Perchance he had already re- 
pented of his first refusal. Anyhow, if an of- 
ficer of France could be made happy with his 
sweetheart and at the same time a brave gen- 
darme could be made richer by a five-franc 
piece, would not La Belle France fight so much 
the better 1 The logic was incontestable. ' ' This 
way, Mademoiselle, Monsieur, and be quick, 
please." 

We had passed through the lines into a riot 
of red and blue uniforms. Soldiers were every- 
where sprawled over the platforms, knotted up 
in sleep, yawning, stretching their limbs, eating, 

240 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENERAL" 

smoking and swearing. No one knew anything* 
about tickets, trains or aught else. 

Swirled about in an eddying tide of entrain- 
ing troops, we were flung up against a station- 
ary being garbed as a railway dispatcher. He 
bluffed and blustered a bit. Our story, however, 
supplemented by some hard cash, procured calm 
and presently we found ourselves in a compart- 
ment with two tickets marked Melun, a few ra- 
tions and sundry admonitions not to converse 
with fellow-passengers until the train started. 

It is hard to explain why any one should 
want to communicate in German to an American 
girl in a French railway compartment in war- 
time. But explain why some people want to 
play with trip-hammers and loaded guns. We 
know they do. And so, though aware that there 
were spy-hunting listeners all around, a mad 
desire to utter the forbidden tongue obsessed 
me. Wry faces from Marie, emphasized by re- 
peated pinches at each threatened outbreak, 
brought me back to my senses and to Anglo- 
Saxon. 

Not only one who spoke, but even one who 
241 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

understood the hated tongue was a suspect. For 
the least knowledge of the enemy's language 
was to some the hall-mark of a spy. The game 
played throughout France and Belgium was to 
fling a sudden command at the suspect, catch- 
ing the unwary fellow off-guard, and thus trap 
him into self-betrayal. 

An official would say sharply: "Nehmen Sie 
ihre Eutte ab" (Take off your hat). Or there 
would come a sudden challenge on the street, 
"Wohin gehen Sie?" (Where are you going?) 
If instinctively one obeyed or replied in Ger- 
man, he was there caught with the goods. 

Our major domo under the influence of the 
coin, or what he had procured at the vintner's 
in exchange therefor, grew a bit playful. He 
suddenly flung open the door and cried, 
" Steigen Sie auf." If I had comprehended 
his meaning involuntarily I would have obeyed, 
but luckily my brain has a slow shifting lan- 
guage gear. By the time it began dawning 
upon me that we had been told to vacate the 
car Marie had fixed me with her eyes and 
gripped me like a vise with her hand so that I 

242 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENERAL » 

knew that I was to stay put. One man involun- 
tarily started and then checked himself. He 
was so patently a Frenchman though that every- 
body laughed. The major domo chuckled and 
marched away, much pleased with his playful 
humor. 

At last, with much jolting, we started on our 
crawling journey. Sometimes the snail-pace 
would be accelerated ; our hopes would then ex- 
pand, only to collapse again with a bang. Again 
we would be sidetracked to let coal-cars, cattle 
cars and flat cars with guns go by. Civilians 
were ciphers in the new order, and if it served 
any military purpose to dump us into the river, 
in we would have gone with no questions asked. 
We sat about, a wilted and dispirited lot. Occa- 
sionally some one would thrust his head out the 
window to observe progress. He was generally 
rewarded by a view of the Eiffel Tower from a 
new angle, for it seemed that we were simply 
being shunted in and about and all around the 
city. 

The most icy reserve must find itself cracked 
and thawing in the intimacies which a jerking 

243 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

railway car precipitates. There is no dignity 
which is proof against a sound hump upon the 
head. Thus our irritations and suspicions gave 
way to laughter, and laughter brings all the 
harriers down. The compartment became a con- 
fessional. The anxious looking man opposite 
was hoping to get to his estate and to bury a 
few of his most treasured things before the Ger- 
mans came. The two young fellows with scrag- 
gly beards were brothers, given five days ' leave 
to see a dying father ; three days had been spent 
in a vain effort to get started there. Another 
man had a half telegram which read, " Accident 

at home you " Not another word had he 

been able to get through. The silent young 
man in the corner smiled pleasantly when his 
turn came but volunteered no information. I 
likewise passed. 

Marie, wishing to fortify herself with all pos- 
sible help in her venture, told her tale in full. 
An immediate proffer came from the hitherto 
taciturn young man in the corner. ' ' Why, this 
is romance in earnest. I do wish that I might 
be of some help, ' ' he said with genuine interest. 

244 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENERAL" 

Our new friend we found had for a grand- 
father no less a dignitary than Alexander 
Dumas. His name he told us was Louis Dumas, 
an artist, not yet called to the colors, and bound 
now for Villeneuve, "and before we can really 
get acquainted, here we are," he said as the 
train came to a stop. 

As he stepped to the door it was flung open 
by an officer who shouted, "Everybody out! 
This car is for the military." We protested. 
We displayed our tickets. The officer laughed 
and, seizing one reluctant passenger, dragged 
him out. A quickly ejected and much dejected 
band, we found ourselves upon the street of a 
little outlying village nine miles from Paris. It 
had taken half as many hours to get there. 

We fell upon the one village gendarme with 
a volley of questions. By pitching her voice 
above the hubbub, Marie got in her inquiry 
about the distance to Melun. 

' ' Thirty kilometers by the main road, ' ' he an- 
swered. 

This, then, was the issue of that tense day 
of strategy and daring: to be stranded in this 

245 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

suburb from which it was impossible to go for- 
ward to Melun and almost as difficult to return 
to Paris. Marie crumpled under the blow and 
then I realized how much it had cost her to 
maintain that calm outward demeanor. 

By sheer will-power she had kept the tears 
from her eyes and the tremor from her limbs. 
Long held in leash, they now leaped out to pos- 
sess her. 

Dumas ran hither and thither, hunting con- 
veyance but in vain. Three of his friends had 
automobiles. He called them by telephone. All 
cars had been commandeered. He stood with 
head drooping in real dejection. 

"Ah, I have it!" he exclaimed, "my friend 
Veilleau, he has an aeroplane and he will do it. ' ' 

This was quite too much even for Marie's 
soaring spirit; but she scarcely had time to 
picture herself ranging the sky when Dumas 
was back again, sorrowfully confessing failure. 
Aeroplanes likewise had heard the tocsin ; they 
had sterner business than wafting lovers 
through the sky; they were carrying explosives 
and messages in the service of France. Dumas 

246 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENEBAL" 

looked almost as disappointed as the wilted lit- 
tle figure he was trying to help. 

When the villagers understood her plight, 
they were full of sympathy, full of condolences, 
but also full of tales of arrest for those travel- 
ing on the main road. 

"Where was this road, anyhow V 9 

"Out there," they replied. 

Turning a corner, we looked down the long 
row of poplars that lined the main road to 
Melun. 



247 



CHAPTER XIII 

AMERICA IN" THE ARMS OP FRANCE 

ANY poplar-fringed road in France holds 
its strange lure. Dignity and grace lie 
in these tall swaying trees sentinelling the way 
on either side. To the poet, it is at all times 
the way to Arcady. But at eventide when the 
mystic light comes streaming from the west, 
touching the billowing green into gold, then 
even to the prosaic there is a call from the whis- 
pering, wind-stirred leaves to go a-grailing and 
to find at the end the palace or the princess. 
This time it was the prince who was calling. 
This little sad-featured girl was a-tune to hear 
his call. Perhaps in the purple mist she could 
even see her prince and feel the pleading of 
those outstretched arms. "Wistfully she looked 
down her road to Arcady ; but how far away the 
end and so bestrewn with terrors. 

248 



AMERICA IN THE ARMS OF FRANCE 

Are psychic forces subject to ordinary phys- 
ical laws, and do they act most powerfully along 
unobstructed ways? At any rate the voltage 
was high in the psychic currents that swept 
the straight road to Melun that afternoon, for 
when this saddened girl turned from her long 
gaze down the road to Melun it was with a 
transfigured face. Her tear-dimmed eyes shone 
with a calm resolve and the uplifted chin fore- 
boded, I perceived, no good to my dreams of 
rest and resignation. 

To know the worst I ventured: "Well, how 
are we going to get to Paris?" 

"You mean Melun f" she gently smiled. 

"Sheer madness," I replied. "A carriage is 
out of the question, and if we had one there 
would be a hundred guards to turn us back." 

We stepped aside while two military trucks 
in their gray war-paint went lurching by. She 
followed them with her eyes until they disap- 
peared into the distant haze where poplar and 
purple sky melted into one. 

"Going straight to Robert," she cried, clasp- 
ing her hands, ' ' and if they only knew how much 

249 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

I want to go, I don't believe they would re- 
fuse me. ' ' 

Preposterous as it was, if they could indeed 
have seen the longing in her eyes I felt certain 
they wouldn't either. Discreetly I refrained 
from saying so. 

We walked slowly back to the partial barri- 
cade which compelled the motors to slow down. 
A siren heralded the approach of a car. I drew 
her aside into the ditch. Wrenching her hand 
loose she cried: 

"I don't care what happens. I'm going to 
stop this car ! ' ' Planting herself squarely in the 
path of the great gray thing, she signaled 
wildly for it to stop. The goggled driver bore 
straight down upon the little figure, then swerv- 
ing sharply to one side jammed on the brakes 
and came to a sudden halt. 

" What's the trouble?" said the other occu- 
pant of the car, a thick-set swarthy fellow in a 
captain's uniform. "Washout, bombs or Uh- 
lans?" 

"No, it's Robert!" Marie exclaimed. 

"Robert?" he cried, angered at this delay. 
250 



AMEEICA IN THE ARMS OF FRANCE 

His aroused curiosity took the sting out of his 
words as he exclaimed, "Who the devil is Rob- 
ert?" 

She told him who Robert was, told it with 
her soul flaming in her face. Her voice im- 
plored. Her eyes entreated. The black cloud 
that had overcast the captain's countenance at 
the impertinence of her action melted slowly 
away into a genial smile. And yet had fortune 
been unkind she might have brought us some 
calculating routinist with pride in strict obedi- 
ence to the letter of the military law. 

"It's a plain infraction of all the regula- 
tions," he said, "but if you can risk all this for 
him, I can risk this much for you. Step up," 
he added, lifting her into a seat, and giving me 
a place behind with the baggage. It had hap- 
pened all too swiftly for comprehension. We 
were on the road to Arcady again — and this 
time in high estate. With fifty horses racing 
away under the hood of our royal car, we were 
speeding forward like a bullet. 

Adown this road in the days of chivalry trav- 
eled oft the noble chevaliers and knights. In 

251 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

shining cavalcades they rode forth for glory 
in their lady's name. Bnt never was there truer 
tribute to the spirit of High Romance than 
when down this same road, athrone upon a war- 
gray car, came this little Pennsylvania music- 
teacher. 

All the way we rode exalted, with hearts too 
full for speech. And our benefactor gave us 
no occasion for it. His eyes were fixed straight 
ahead upon the speeding road, alert for ob- 
stacles or rapt in visions of his own dear ones ; 
or, more probable still, deep in reconsideration 
of his rashness in harboring two strangers who 
might turn out to be traitors. 

"Ten spies were shot here in the last two 
days," was his one laconic communication. As 
the Romanesque towers of Melun's Notre Dame 
came into view, he drew up by a post which 
marked a mile from the city, saying, 

"The rest of the way I believe you had bet- 
ter go on foot. ' ' With a polite bow and a smile 
he bade us adieu and was off, leaving us quite 
non-plussed. But the swift ride had driven re- 
freshment and resolution into us. After some 

252 



AMEEICA IN THE AEMS OF FRANCE 

spirited passages with a few astounded sentries, 
we found ourselves in the city of our quest. 

It was a small garrison center. Into it now 
from every side had poured rivulets of soldiers 
until the street shimmered with its red and blue. 
Melun had changed roles with Paris. A desert 
quiet brooded over the gay capital, while this 
drab provincial place was now athrum with 
activity — not the activity of parade but of the 
workshop. The air was vibrant with the clangor 
of industry. Everywhere soldiers were clean- 
ing guns, grooming horses, piling sacks. The 
only touch to lighten this depressing dead-in- 
earnestness came from a group of soldiers en- 
gaged in filling a huge bolster. They playfully 
tried to push one of their number in with the 
straw. In one doorway two men were seeking 
to render their uniforms less of a target by 
inking their brass-buttons black, while two rol- 
licking fellows perched high upon a bread- 
wagon were making the welkin ring with 
vociferous demands for passage way. That was 
what everybody wanted. 

We, too, pressed forward into the throng. 
253 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GEEMAN EAGLE 

Enough other civilians were scattered amidst 
the masses of soldiery to render us not too con- 
spicuous. And such a weltering anarchy it was : 
men, horses, and guns jammed together in one 
grand promiscuous jumble. Who was to organ- 
ize discipline and victory out of such a turmoil 1 
But that there was a directing mind moving 
through this democratic chaos, the Germans 
later learned to know full well. Likewise, the 
two strangers congratulating themselves on 
being lost in the vast confusion. 

To get our bearings we seated ourselves in a 
small cafe, and were intently poring over a map 
when a shuffling noise made us look up. A de- 
tachment of soldiers was entering the cafe. 
Much to our astonishment, they came to atten- 
tion in front of us. They constituted the spy- 
hunting squad. All day they walked the city 
on the trail of suspects. To trap a prospective 
victim, and just as they were relishing the 
shooting of him to be compelled to release him, 
and then to drag on to the next prospect, and 
to repeat the process was not inspiriting. Ap- 

254 



AMERICA IN THE ARMS OF FRANCE 

parently luck had gone against them, but at 
sight of us a new hope lit their eyes. 

Two officers, bowing politely, said : ' ' Pardon, 
Monsieur; pardon, Madame! Your papers." 

Being held up as a spy, however nerve-rack- 
ing, contributes considerably to one's sense of 
self-importance. It's a rare thrill for a civilian 
to be waited on by a reception committee in 
full dress uniform. 

But this was by all odds the most imposing 
array of military yet. I remember being dis- 
tinctly impressed by the comic opera setting; 
the gay costumed soldiers in a crowded French 
cafe, the big American and the little heroine. 
In a moment the soldier chorus would go rol- 
licking off singing some ditty like: 

"Let high respect come to their station, 
For they are members of a mighty nation." 

I deliberated for a few seconds, for presently 
our papers like talismen would exorcise all dan- 
gers. With a gesture suitably sweeping for 
the close of this act, I smiled assuringly, reached 
into that inner right-hand pocket, and felt a ter- 

255 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

rific thump of the heart as I clutched an empty 
void and forthwith drew out an empty hand. 
The smile turned a little sickly. I repeated. 
Likewise a third time. The smile died and a 
cold sweat gathered on my brow. It was now 
more like a Turkish bath than a comic opera. 
The rollicking soldier chorus began to look curi- 
ously like a band of assassins. 

I was positive that I had tucked these papers 
in that pocket. Had some evil spirit whisked 
them away? I conducted a frantic and furious 
search through every pocket. As one after an- 
other they turned out empty an increasing 
gloom settled down upon my face, and upon 
the faces of the assassins was registered a 
corresponding increment of joy. 

Reader, have you ever been warden of the 
theater tickets? As your party thronged up to 
the entrance, do you remember the stand-still 
of your heart when you found that the tickets 
weren't in the pocket that you put them, fol- 
lowed by the discovery that they weren't in any 
other pocket? Do you remember spasmodically 
ramming your hands into all your pockets until 

256 



AMERICA IN THE ARMS OF FRANCE 

your arms took on the motions of a sailor at the 
pump, trying to save the old ship at sea? Re- 
member the black looks insinuating you were an 
idiot and the growing conviction on your part 
that they were not far wrong? Multiply and 
intensify all these sensations a thousandfold 
and you will get a faint idea of how one feels 
when he is trying to locate his passports and the 
officials are hoping that he can't. 

Several months elapsed in as many seconds. 
To break the appalling silence, I began gibber- 
ing away in a jargon compound of gesticulation, 
English and remnants of High School French. 
Why, oh, why wouldn't somebody say some- 
thing? At last the commissionaire, hitherto im- 
passive, said: 

"Vielleicht Sie konnen Deutsch sprechen." 

(" Perhaps you can speak German.") 

It was so kind of him that I plunged head- 
long into the net. 

" Ja ich kcmn Deutsch sprechen," I fairly 
shouted. 

("Yes, I can speak German.") 

I would have confessed to Chinese or Rus- 
257 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

sian, so anxious was I to get on speaking terms 
with some one. 

"So you speak German," said the commis- 
sionaire significantly; "I thought as much." 
The soldiers looked at their Lebel rifles as 
though the not unpleasant duty of making them 
speak for France would soon be theirs. In their 
eyes now I was a German spy and Marie was 
my accomplice. I began to be almost convinced 
of it myself. 

Now if this were fiction and not just a straight 
setting down of facts the papers might here be 
produced by a breathless courier or dropped 
from an aeroplane. But they weren't. 

At this crisis when all seemed lost, Marie 
rallied. She said : ' ' Look in the lining of your 
coat." 

I was unaware of any hole in the lining but, 
duly obedient, I reached inside and found an 
opening. Some papers rustled in my hand. I 
clutched them like a madman, violently drew 
them forth and, perceiving that they were the 
precious documents, waved them about like a 
dancing dervish. The soldiers were distinctly 

258 



AMERICA IN THE ARMS OF FRANCE 

disappointed and cast an evil eye on Marie, as 
though holding her personally responsible for 
cheating them out of a little target-practice. 

The commissionaires examined the papers, 
smiled as graciously as before they had frowned 
and, with the crestfallen soldiers resuming their 
old look of boredom, they disappeared as mys- 
teriously as they had come. 

Out into the gathering gloom we followed too, 
and trudged to the barracks upon the hill. 

At the entrance the familiar "Quiva la?" 
(Who goes there f) rang a challenge to our ap- 
proach. We informed the subaltern that it was 
Sergeant le Marchand that we sought. 

A confusion of calls echoed through the court. 
An orderly then announced that Robert le 
Marchand was sick; this was followed by the 
report that he was out ; then some more conflict- 
ing reports, followed by Robert le Marchand 
himself. A new-lit lantern in the archway dif- 
fused a, wan light around his pale face while he 
peered forward into the dusk. He could not 
see at first, but as by a dream-voice out of the 

259 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

mist came his name, twice repeated : ' ' Robert, 
Robert." 

Was this some torturing hallucination? Be- 
fore he had time to consider that, the reality 
flung herself into his arms. Again and again 
he clasped the nestling figure, as if to assure 
himself that it was not an apparition that he 
held but his very own sweetheart. 

They stood there in the archway, quite ob- 
livious to the passing soldiers. The soldiers 
seemed to understand and, smiling approval of 
this new entente — America in the arms of 
France — they silently passed along. 

The first transports of surprise and joy be- 
ing over, he begged for an explanation of this 
miracle. Briefly I sketched the doings of the 
day, and as he saw this wisp of a girl braving 
all dangers for love's sake, he was in one mo- 
ment terror-stricken at the risks she had run, 
and in the next aglow with admiration for her 
splendid daring. Dangers had haloed her and 
he sat silent like a worshiper. 

"Instead of a tragedy," he exclaimed, "it's 
like a story with a happy ending. But let me 

260 



AMERICA IN THE ARMS OF FRANCE 

tell how narrowly we escaped a tragic ending/ ' 
lie added, drawing Marie closer to him. 

On the fifth of August it seems that his squad 
had been stationed upon the bridge over the 
Seine at Corbeille. The orders were to prevent 
any passage over the bridge and under the 
bridge — particularly the latter, as the authori- 
ties suspected an attempt upon the part of 
enemy plotters to use the waterways in and 
out of Paris. Traffic had been suspended and 
orders had been explicit: "Shoot any water- 
craft, without challenge, as it turns the bend at 
the Corbeille bridge." 

Corbeille had been the objective of our pro- 
posed canoe journey. There had been abundant 
warrant then in the very constitution of things 
for my psychic shivers at the first broaching 
of that canoe-trip. 

Our escape had been by a narrow margin. 
If that telegram, "Left Corbeille and gone to 
Melun," had missed us, Robert le Marchand's 
first shot might have meant death, not to his 
enemy but to his own life and soul. On the eve 
of the great war he might have embraced his 

261 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

dearest one cold and lifeless. But instead of 
that somber ending, here she was, warm, radiant 
and laughing — doubly precious by the trials 
through which she had passed and the death 
from which she had been delivered. 



262 



CHAPTER XIV 



NO-MAN'S-LAND 



THE movements of the 231ier Regiment 
d'Infanterie were publicly announced. It 
was scheduled to entrain on the morrow for 
the front between Metz and Nancy. Eobert le 
Marchand needed not to go. Pronounced unfit 
by the regimental doctor, his name had been 
placed upon the hospital list. Amidst the bustle 
of preparation for departure he spent the day 
in quietude, and Marie played nurse to the in- 
valid. 

Her little tale about being a Red Cross worker 
told at the Gare du Nord turned out to be the 
truth and not the fable that she had fancied. 
Robert's recovery was so rapid that the doctor 
was astonished. He was understanding, how- 
ever; also he was a very kindly doctor. He 
came and smiled and nodded his approval. 

263 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

Then he went away, still leaving Robert on the 
sick list. 

A long season of such delightful conva- 
lescence was now his for the taking. Golden 
days they promised to be to him and to Marie, 
but to France those early August days held 
portents of defeat and disaster. So one gath- 
ered from the ugly rumors from the frontier. 
The great battle raging in the north had its 
miniature in their souls. Theirs to choose days 
of ease and dalliance or the call to duty. 

When the 231st regiment formed into line 
the afternoon of August 7th, the sergeant, radi- 
ant and happy, was with them again. But the 
tears in his eyes? That perplexed his comrades. 
Those who knew the secret let the romance lose 
none of its glamour in the telling until Marie 
became, forsooth, the heroine of the regiment. 

At four o'clock the regimental band struck 
up the Marseillaise and the regiment moved 
down the road. The sergeant's feet kept time 
with his marching men, while his eyes turned 
to the blue figure on a balcony, whose hand was 
fluttering a limp white handkerchief. She was 

264 



NO-MAN'S-LAND 

striving her best to wave a cheerful farewell. 
The repeated strains: "Ye sons of France 
awake to glory," came each time more faintly 
as the regiment moved steadily away. There is 
always pain in such a growing distance. But 
it was not all pain to the tear-stained girl upon 
the balcony. She had her part in that glory. 
Had she not, too, made her sacrifice. 

It was quite as if the regiment had sailed 
away under sealed orders. Metz and Nancy had 
been broadcasted about as the objective of the 
231st. But that had been just a blind for Ger- 
man informers. For the next communique men- 
tioning the regiment came from far to the west, 
where it had been hurried to hold up the grave 
threat upon Paris. At Soissons the gray-green 
advance rolled itself up against the red and blue 
of the 231st. 

Back and forth the battle line surged through 
the old streets, now lurid with the light of blaz- 
ing houses. A shell falling on the town-hall fired 
this ancient land-mark. A great flame-fountain 
burst up from the heart of the city. "Rescue 

265 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

mood though fully alive to all the rumors of 
war. They were sons of France, from their in- 
fancy drilled in the idea that some day with 
their comrades they were to hear this very drum 
calling them to march from their homes; they 
had even been taught to cherish the coming of 
this day when they should redeem the tarnished 
glory of France by helping to plant the tricolor 
over the lost provinces of Alsace and Lor- 
raine. 

But that the dreaded, yet hoped-for day had 
really arrived, seemed preposterous and incred- 
ible — incredible until we drove into the village 
of Reuilly where an eager crowd, gathering 
around a soldier with a drum, caused our chauf- 
feur to draw sharply up beside the curb and 
we came to a stop twenty feet from the drum- 
mer. He was a man gray enough to have been, 
if not a soldier, at least a drummer boy in 1870. 
The pride that was his now in being the official 
herald of portentous news was overcast by an 
evident sorrow. 

As if conscious of the fact that he was to 
pound not on the dead dry skin of his drum, but 

226 



THE BEATING OF "THE GENERAL" 

on living human hearts, he hesitated a moment 
before he let the sticks falls. Then sharp and 
loud throbbed the drum through the still-hushed 
street. Clear and resolute was the voice in which 
he read the order for mobilization. The whole 
affair took little more than a minute. Those 
who know how heavily the disgrace and dis- 
aster of 1870 lie upon the French heart will 
admit that it is fair to say that all their life 
this crowd had lived for this moment. Now 
that it had come, they took it with tense white 
looks upon their faces. But not a cheer, not 
a cry, not a shaking of the fist. 

The only outwardly tragic touch came from 
our chauffeur. When he heard the words "la 
mobilisation" he flung down his cap, threw up 
his hands, bowed his head a second, then 
gripped his steering wheel and, for fifteen miles, 
drove desperately, accurately, as though his car 
were a winged bullet shooting straight into the 
face of the enemy. That fifteen-mile run from 
Reuilly to Paris was through a long lane of sor- 
row: for not to one section or class, but to all 
France had come the call to mobilize. Every 

227 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

to her. But she had to face it out alone. Upon 
her torn heart were beaten a thousand hammer- 
strokes, and through the endless nights she bore 
the anguish of a thousand deaths. 

The death-lists of Europe hold 5,000,000 other 
names besides Lieutenant le Marchand's, Be- 
hind each name there marches with springless 
steps one or more figures shrouded in black. 

A year later one of these figures arose from 
her burial alive, a whitened shadow of her 
former self. 

"I know that I ought not to have collapsed, 
just as I know that I ought not to hate the Ger- 
mans," Marie wrote. "I'm pulling myself to- 
gether now, and I am trying to work and to for- 
give. But my thoughts are always wandering 
out to just one spot — that is where Robert lies. 
"When peace comes I'm going straight over 
there and with my own hands I shall dig 
through every trench until I find him." 

Tragic futility indeed! One recompense for 
the colossal slaughter and the long war; few 
shall ever find their dead. 

On a recent Sunday morning I stepped into 
268 



NO-MAN'S-LAND 

a church of a Lake City of the West. The organ 
was filling the large structure with its sounds; 
gradually out of the dim light came the face of 
the player. 

A hard road had she traveled since last I 
saw her, a trim little blue-clad figure waving 
good-by from that balcony in Melun. It was 
not strange that her face was white. There was 
nothing strange either in the passion of that 
music. 

These experiences of Gethsemane and Cal- 
vary had been first enacted in her own soul. 
The organ was but giving voice to them. There 
was a plaintive touch in the minor chords, as 
if pleading for days that were gone. It climbed 
to a closing rapture, as if two who had parted 
here had, for the moment, hailed each other in 
the world of Souls. 



269 



AFTERWORD 

IT seems sometimes as if the torch of civiliza- 
tion had been almost extinguished in this 
deluge of blood. This darkening of the face of 
the earth has cost more than the blood and 
treasure of the race — it has involved a terrific 
strain on the mind and soul of man. 

The blasting of hundreds of villages, the sink- 
ing of thousands of ships, and the killing of 
millions of men is no small monument to the 
power of the human will. Deplore as we may 
the sanguinary ends to which this will has been 
bent, it has at any rate shown itself to be no 
weakling. We must marvel at the grim tenacity 
with which it has held to its goal through the 
long red years. 

But now it is challenged by an infinitely big- 
ger task. 

The great nations sundered apart by this 
hideous anarchy have become hissings and by- 

270 



AFTERWORD 

words to each other. One group has been cast 
outside the Pale to become the Ishmaels of the 
universe. The purpose is to keep them there. 

Yet try as we may we cannot live upon a 
totally disrupted planet without bringing a com- 
mon disaster upon us all. It may be a matter of 
decades and generations but eventually the re- 
conciliation must come. 

To start civilization on the upward path 
again, to make the world into a neighborhood 
anew, to achieve the moral unity of humanity, 
is that infinitely bigger task with which the 
human will is challenged. As in the last years 
it has relentlessly concentrated its energies 
upon the Great War, now through the next dec- 
ades and generations it must as steadfastly 
hold them to the Great Reconciliation. The 
tragedy of it all is that humanity must go at 
this crippled by a hatred like acid eating into 
the soul. 

Villages will arise again from their ruins, 
the plow shall turn anew the shell-pitted 
fields into green meadow-lands, a kindly nature 
will soon obliterate the scars upon the land- 

271 



IN THE CLAWS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE 

scape, but not the deep searings on the soul. 
Europe must grapple with this work of recon- 
struction handicapped by this black devil 
poisoning the mind and vitiating every effort. 
The worst curse bequeathed to the coming gen- 
erations is not the mountain of debt but this 
heritage of hate. 

It does not behoove Americans to stand on 
inviolate shores and prate of the wickedness of 
wrath. Moreover, this evil is not to be exorcised 
by a pious wish for it not to be. It is. And 
there is every excuse under the arch of heaven 
for its existence. 

If we had felt the eagles' claws tearing at 
our flesh ; if, like Europe, our soil was crimsoned 
with the blood of our murdered; if millions of 
our women were breaking their hearts in an- 
guish — we too would consider it a gratuitous bit 
of impertinence to be told not to cherish rancor 
towards those who had unleashed the hell- 
hounds of lust and carnage upon us. 

As it is, we are not sacrosanct. Three thou- 
sand miles have not sufficed to keep the deadly 
virus out of our system. The violation of Bel- 

272 

R D - 6 6. I 



AFTERWORD 

gium kindled a fire against the invaders which 
the successive cruelties served to fan into a 
flaming resentment. 

Then came our own losses — a mere grazing 
of the skin alongside of the bleeding white of 
Europe. But it has touched us deep enough to 
rouse even a sense of vindictiveness. This kept 
to ourselves will do injury to ourselves alone. 
But when we shout or whisper across the 
seas that we too despise the barbarians we help 
no one. We simply help to render the heart- 
breaking task of reconciliation well-nigh im- 
possible by lashing to a wilder fury the people 
already blinded, embittered and frenzied by 
their own hate. Those who, above the luxury 
of giving full rein to their own passions, put 
the welfare of the French, English, Belgians 
and other broken peoples of earth, will do 
everything in their power to eradicate this gan- 
grene from their souls. 



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